Afternoon Treat

by Andy Schuck

It’s times I don’t get much sleep
that I’m laying on the puff couch
and feeling like I’m falling through space
above the wispy atmosphere
having just rode my bicycle out a cave
off a two by four near Niagara
and suddenly my chest ripples
and the air hums through the blue, shooting
off me in bullets, and I can’t enjoy myself
because I keep blacking out. Each time
I wake I don't know if the parachute is safe,
I’m afraid that if I open my mouth, my head
will fill up and explode like a
goose egg full of callous bees. When I look over
my instructor gives me the thumb’s up and I begin
somersaults that I can’t get out of,
spinning the world upside-down/rightside-up
upside-down/rightside-up tumbling down
like a mouse through a plastic tube
until it all becomes aqua blue like the sea.
I can’t get straight up, can’t let the rip chord
tthhhhwwpppp! because the parachute would howl
up about me, choking my nostrils, drowning
me in white. I locate my toes, pink twinkling
upsi-daisies, I remember the marches I did
in high school and how raw my feet looked after
practice. They’re pink right now because my shoes
sailed off into orbit. Dr. Wonderthal is going after
them- I can see his mustache and sunglasses
and the grin: he could get free donuts and coffee
if he wanted them. As for me I’ve got to find
that two-by-four and line up a jump again. It’s
always in places I don’t want it or would
never find it, perhaps taped to that guy’s
stale boxers or inside the rosary of gulls
across the sky.