The Mourning Dove

By Xavier Vagus

Adapted from The Darkling Thrush, by Thomas Hardy

 

I leaned my pleated leather pants

against a bar of lace

by a woman with breast implants

and glitter on her face,

confetti fell sporadically

like florid snow or jade

and everyone on ecstasy

was trying to get laid.

 

The glitzy party seemed to taste

like 90s concentrate,

a mixture of a neon paste,

cyber juice and bass.

The music boomed out luscious sex

through my glowing drink,

the century’s innovation flexed,

we were afraid to blink.

 

And then a melancholy coo

somewhere behind the band,

professed a mood of pallid gloom,

sorrowful and sad.

An old dove, wizened, gray and small

on the window sill

decided his grief should fall

upon our merry frills.

 

Like two hollow bones smacked in time,

his soulful malady

entered copulating drugged up minds

and blithe carnality.

In his voice I thought he crowed

a cry of cursed despair-

maybe he foretold some distant woe,

but we just didn’t care.

 

December 31, 2000

The Mourning Dove originally appeared in $5.95 Buffet