The ice-cream headache has you seeing double
as Goody Twoshoes calls by your table to arrange
some kind of smooth-talk conference full of limitless
possibilities, lots of cocktails, two naked men and naturally
behind the pot-plant your mother throwing up
as she always does, come midnight. Some aperçu! Excuse me, I
have to go … Look, I didn’t really mean to say ‘naturally’ –
that was a Freudian slip, which misbehaviour has increased
among the dilettante young. There, there,
wipe your eyes, sweetheart, and stop rubbing
your bald patch. Ugh! The store detective wants to grill
your mother about the missing underwear … or so he said.

‘Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,’ Shelley said,
‘stains the white underpants of eternity.’ Radiance, whatever. Same
difference: like how Joy H. Breshan makes up a singular constituency,
your twin sister: belie, beleaguer, belabour the point, belike.