Agents of paradise, white slavers patient
among the castanets of holiday looters.
Screened and tamed with fruit and caffeine.
Even the most maladroit and gauche among
family idiots, even they take the air as though
the world were insufficient to displease them,
snooty world of ‘ciao’ and ‘okay’.
A ladybug trundles across the red plastic surface
of holiday placemats, its mission to soothe the
superstitious, spell dotted comfort.
Matchsticks fountain over the platform,
the vendor in his kiosk startled by a rude headline.
Someone he knows, someone he thought he knew,
accused of something he can’t believe.