EVER AFTER

If only every billboard model, 20-foot high
grins hinting they've got it all figured out, Jack,
that they're living the life, the real life,

if only these models would just come down
& apologize to every single person
driving past in the haze of their life-sized lives.

What happens to us? One week Jill
catches Jack gazing at some low-cut, short
skirted magazine cover & the same heavy-

lidded, open mouthed look that says
passion, lust
to Jack becomes embedded in Jill's dowdy head

& taunts her the rest of that night,
well into the next week. Finally it is too much.
She questions Jack's every move, unable

to say whether she "loves him" or not.
Who's smiling now? Weeks later we find
Jack in every all night supermarket magazine aisle

trying to find himself in all the paper smiles
& at that same moment Jill is looking for herself
in the bedroom mirror & is looking still.

all poems from the chapbook HELLBENT
from Lazy Frog Press bullpen@lazyfrogpress.com