circus pizza
big gulps with crushed ice
code red mountain dew addicts
four deep in the back of a gold camry
eight identical k swiss sneakers in a
perfect row along the floorboard
tapping their feet to a lil troy track
a fresh bag of jolly ranchers
and a double pack of kool cigarettes
the old holiday gas station routine
the trunk of the camry stuffed full
with ryan phillippe posters
and blockbuster VHS rentals
a shag carpet steering wheel cover
door lock knobs in the shape of dice...
skull chromies...
swallowed up in pre-cell phone euphorics
gold chains...
jnco jean fanatics rapping to lil troy
the circus circus freaks
they pull up and hustle in
animatronic freaks...
the change machine...
the ping of tokens...
analog sounds
red trays redolent of pepperoni nights
the middle-aged drunk mom with
the vodka and dr. pepper technique
crushed ice...
laser freaks...
skeeball junkies mummified in prize tickets
half erection arcade game monstrosities...
stuck in the dollar phonebooth whirlwind...
the schwag weed dealer at the prize counter
cargo pockets stuffed with tickets that he
jacked from the choir boys
the single mom goes out to a
chevy tahoe with an assistant hockey coach
the tahoe smells of fossilized breezers...
the coach has a pig shave haircut and white oakleys
he’s trying to knock himself out on
beer from his coffee mug
he has a case of busch regular in the tahoe
and a soft pack of newport lights...
he and the single mom return in a half hour
she is covered in nightmare stardust
she goes back to her vodka and dr. pepper
the hockey coach hits on a high school waitress
he has promethean fire
he is an unregistered sex offender
meantime in the main hall there’s a
kid who is crushing the crane game
six girls surround him with bubblicious traps
they are death maidens dressed up
as catholic bubblegum saints
the kid scores
the bubblicious girls choke him out under
a bathroom hand dryer that says “press butt”
since one of the jolly rancher kids
scratched off some of the letters with
a swiss army knife
the crane game kid is buried in a pall
made of pizza boxes constructed by
the teenagers in the parliament lights brigade
the crane game kid in the pall
sputters off into the crypts of Dolby Digital
his mom is drunk on vodka and dr. pepper
she asks for management and is buried in turn
there is a song by the verve pipe playing
as she is slung into a little man-made pond
that sits inside a freeway cloverleaf
then she rises...
then there is an investigation...
the bubblicious girls cop a plea
but they get probation with the help of
a lawyer from the mall of america
he’s a k swiss junky himself who
suffers from the worst case of
castration anxiety known to mankind
half his income is spent on jolly ranchers
and k swiss kids
the bubblicious girls have him on
permanent retainer
in his down time he chews
sunflower seeds and sucks on ranchers
in nickelodeon universe
he’s a fabulous vampire
Adam T. Johnson lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota
Twitter: @AdamThenJohnson