Applying Toxic Mushrooms

In a room draped in royal blue

a consultant advises applying

toxic mushrooms to problems

office politics can’t solve.

The room shimmers like tissue. 

I’m planning a dinner party

for you and your feral husband.

After brandy and thick cigars

I’ll propose you elope with me

to the nearest rain forest, leaving

your husband shuffling papers

in his dusty office where stainless 

steel instruments glower and books

too thick to grip with his tiny hands

gloat with insufferable knowledge.

This plan will enrage him, of course.

Exposing his aspirin-sized teeth

he’ll demand an apology;

but I’ll stare until the toxic

mushrooms in his salad attack

his liver and he staggers with pain.

We’ll rush him to the hospital

and assure him of survival,

then taxi to the airport and lose

ourselves together in the world.

What a daydream. The consultant

in the room draped in royal blue

hasn’t mentioned toxic mushrooms,

but flashing his MBA smile

he offers pie charts related

to better use of personnel

to cope with a grim economy.

I made up the rest to impress you,                                   

and would like to share it all

over cups of Earl Grey tea;

but as the consultant’s lecture ends

your blue gaze looks too bottomless

to lure all the way to the tropics,

so I won’t even say hello.

William Doreski

Something Gray Happens

As we walk beside a granite wall

discussing friends whose cancers

have recurred, enemies whose wealth

has mounted, and the tsunami

that has disabled half of Japan,

something gray happens: a misstep 

takes me inside the wall. I panic, 

but you see nothing wrong. The day,

filtered through stone, looks final.

The density stifles my breathing

and igneous pressure retards

my already compromised heart.

You believe I still walk beside you

with rapt and human expression.

Yet I’m inside the wall, not quite

fossilized but trapped like a fly

in amber. Only my shadow 

walks beside you, a muddle

of shame. Don’t touch or confide

in it. Please call a mason 

to demolish the wall and free me.

Too late. Your footsteps recede,

and the tall voice of my shadow

drifts on the brittle March wind.

I try to back out of this trap,

but whatever opening occurred

to admit me now has closed,

leaving no trace of a seam.

Your fading laughter frightens me.

I fear if you accustom yourself

to only the shadow part of me

you’ll forget I used to occupy

three dimensions, and won’t recall 

how much of me the stone absorbed,

how much or how little you cared.

William Doreski

The Night’s Criminal Intentions Made Clear

Midnight, New Jersey suburbs.

Expressionless houses stare

into places I’ve never been.

Long streets warp into dead-ends.

The party ended with regrets,

air kisses, and many hurt feelings.

A long drive home to New Hampshire

past half-awake Manhattan,

through Connecticut’s uneasy sleep.

Too much outstanding mortgage,

too many kids in college. The stars

won’t reveal themselves until

I’m north of Springfield. Troopers

will ignore me. Huge trucks will sneer

as they pass at twenty or thirty

miles above the limit. Someone

will die alone and drunk on a curve

on a two-lane highway out of sight,

the wreckage folded like origami.

I shouldn’t have driven so far

to attend such a sullen party,

should have gotten drunk and slept

on the host sofa and driven home

in mid-morning glare. Instead I drank

club soda and stared into faces

ignited by gothic daydreams

no living man could fulfill. One

by one the women departed

with angry husbands simmering

with liquor. One by one the men

departed with disappointed wives.

The night’s criminal intentions

made clear, I packed myself

like a carry-on and drove away.

Now I’m lost in the empty streets,

desperate for turnpike or parkway.                

Vast cemeteries gloom in lamplight

intended to discourage vandals.

I drive so carefully the planet

can’t get too firm a grip on me;

and as I exit New Jersey

over the George Washington Bridge

I glance at the bottomless Hudson

and catch myself adrift and waving,

not drowning, on the carbon slick.

William Doreski 

William Doreski's work has appeared in various e and print journals and in several collections, most recently Waiting for the Angel (Pygmy Forest Press, 2009).