Pan- Variations Featuring Carter-Era Mutant
“Dr. David Banner: physician, scientist; searching for a way to tap into the
hidden strengths that all humans have.” – The Incredible Hulk
There’s a disco version of The Incredible Hulk
putting a piano together from sawdust.
Its harmony leads to window gazing and
the panoply of children sired by neighbor
whose passenger side has a broken sun visor,
so I place pancetta and a roll of duct tape
on his doorstep like the deadpan Samaritan
advised. Faith, your backup panoramic
sparing the 1/3 peace sign of my
gluteal crack carousing loose pants
because we’re a surge from Easter
metaphor pandering to Judas virus.
Pandemonium, the gamma rays essential
to David Banner’s crisis, tabloid
panic tangential to ‘Hulking out,’
Lou Ferrigno’s makeup seat
panoptical with swivel. Adrenalized,
a Eucharist bench presses a city block.
Pantone couture? Sewing-machine grey.
Pandemic-on-newsprint, a testament worse.
Distortion Aphrodite
Circus and ficus, the horticulturist trapezing
that embroidery trick because the bed-of-nails
overnighter wanted a hammock, not homecoming.
Sideshow journals were hanging on a social-
media comeback: Carniveil and Gaff Quarterly,
stage-hands cleaning tightrope perspiration.
Who wouldn’t be a stilt of nerves on highwires
that stretch from there to equilibrium when
lifeline and paycheck depend on sensitivity
of feet? Christ, the ankle variables! Then
you have the barker’s pyrite shouted
into microphone: juggler gospels and
machete physics that break their promises
when crowds peer too closely. We’ve run
out of elan. The fire eater lab-bound or tent,
the dung records a peanut-allergy elephant
breaks. Flowers to photoshoot, Aphrodite
wobbles the conch between make-believes.
Malaria and Christ Helmet
My Grandpa Floyd’s combat stories included a bullet-
dinged helmet because Catholicism had his survival
down to a seraphim science. Nicknamed Doc based
on the telephone repair kit he carried, his last days
walkie-talkie sized.
The funeral luncheon fed us
a buffet of spaghetti in ceramic bowls better suited
to the pomodoro elbows my father made two nights
a week.
Half the family got his name wrong.
Punishment for my parents’ quickie California
marriage three months pregnant—an Eastern
European to a hairdresser Italian.
Did Floyd ever move him like a chess
piece into son-in-law tense?
Maybe your grandfather had worse war
wounds than malaria and Christ helmet,
house emptied of mementos prior
to the estate sale.
My one request,
a globe with calendar numbers wed
to Australia, the stakes life and cocktail
sauce spilled on obituary draft.
Jon Riccio received his PhD from the University of Southern Mississippi's Center for Writers. His chapbook, Eye, Romanov, is forthcoming from SurVision Books, and his full-length, Agoreography, will be published by 3: A Taos Press.