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"The Patron", "Fear and Loathing", & "The Tempest" by M.P. Powers



The Patron He’s sitting in the corner,

side-part falling to the left,

white napkin fluttering

on his breast, soft pink hands

armed with cutlery. He spears

the Schweinshaxe, skillfully

separates meat from bone,

and forks it up, divebombing

the pinkish blob down his savage

gullet. “How is everything?”

the waitress asks. He nods

toward his beer. “Refill?” she asks.

The question’s redundant.

He goes back to his Schweinshaxe,

spears it, slices it, divebombs it.

Then looks about with tiny

rapacious eyes, eyes that are blind

to Bruegel, sonnets, the blue-

breasted fairywren. But when

the waitress leans over the next

table to pick up a plate, those

same eyes wash over her

backside, giving it a shrewd

and rapid-fire appraisal.

Then it’s back to his dish,

sliding the Schweinshaxe

over a little, scooping up a forkful

of sauerkraut and jamming it home.



Fear and Loathing


although I don’t

or can’t

or won’t

I’ve come so close


to letting everything go


I feel like a day-old

newspaper

with a crow standing on it


to keep

the wind

from

carrying it away.



The Tempest


An angelfaced twentynothing

Polish girl

sitting Indianstyle

at the Hermannplatz U-Bahn station,

a big black poodle

piled in her arms,

tin cup for donations sitting between her legs.


That was five years ago.

She has since lost

her dog and undergone an unfathomable

Ovidian metamorphosis,

her gleaming mass

of chestnutcolored

locks sheared into a crooked mohawk,


her mouth a collection of broken stones,

clothes soiled and frumpy,

black electrical tape

keeping one sole from dragging

her into the earth.


She now looks more like Caliban

than she does Ariel, that soft broken beauty

of just five years ago,

tin cup banking with fire.




M.P. Powers lives with one foot in Berlin and one in South Florida. Recent publications include the Columbia Review, Wrongdoing Magazine, Glitchwords, Mayday Magazine, and others. His artwork can be found on Instagram @mppowers113

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