Edema

On that July night
her roundhouse kick
without meaning

lazy earlobe high
sticks, glued
by your flytrap.

Instinctively your right foot
centaur-sweeps away
her lone ostrich leg.

Whaddaya mean the bigger they are?
He naps a medicated slumber
prone, sprawled on the floor,

of aspirin, two white pillows
swallowed dry without water,
each a hundred pajamaed silhouettes

who attack all at once
instead of one by one
(as strategy would dictate)

not allowing him enough choreography
to react, spinning wobbly china
on flexible, wavy poles

until he loses momentum,
smothered by the dreamy state
meant to ward off serpents.

Who are these invisible
dissidents who conspire to betray
a whole continent which grieves

as underneath, somewhere feiry red,
indignant xenophobes
chant grateful mantras,

their devil-work, their legacy
to uproot the inveterate
that damn July night.

Fallen head first, she struggles to
windmill a scissor kick,
red coals for eyes.