Jeffrey Winke: In Mid-Night Wanders

.

The rough idling of an 18-wheeler with its pshhhhit, pshhhhit airbrakes stir him in the early dawn. It’s best to move on anyway. Out of mercy or carelessness, the backdoor to this industrial cement-block building is open most nights and the protected, 15-degrees-warmer-than-outside-temp six-foot entranceway, leading to the locked steel interior door, is appreciated. It’s much better than the shelter with the dorm-style cots and the need to protect valuables from the coughing, expectorating human refuse with at least one druggie manic who “borrows” a pair of dry socks here and a warm hat there in mid-night wanders. And the shelter staff with their malevolent, pseudo-benevolent jesus-loves-you-stares. He wants to scream, “The f jesus loves me – if he does, why am I stuck here sleeping on my WILL DO ANYTHING FOR FOOD OR MONEY sign and begging for a bigger breakfast than an anorexic eats.”

.

bird carcass . . .

dirt, dry leaves

and gum wad

.

by Jeffrey Winke

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Jeffrey Winke: Part of the Grand Design

A short skirt is a promise. Nothing more, nothing less. Guys view promises as sacred trusts; women know promises can easily evaporate, like spilled water in a desert. She wears a short skirt, shear black lacy leggings, and tiny alligator-skin boots that look clunky, but stylish. Her eyes scan the room as she enters. She’s a collector. Her collection: hopeful stares of men. The quartet plays “Eye of the Tornado”—how fitting. Hancock becomes her soundtrack. Scrambled sax and piano—primal brass and sophisticated ivory. There is the usual assortment of guys with dopey, boyish grins. The boyish-grin-thing only works when there’s a bit of mischief in the eyes. Altar boys never get laid, but boys in detention do. She saunters to the bar with hip swivel to shorten a few breaths. Leaning forward as though she were about to whisper a secret to the bartender, she asks for the best cognac. Some guy—nameless and faceless—will pay. She’s an anomaly. Young, attractive women don’t drink top-shelf cognac. And they don’t frequent jazz clubs. She’s part of the grand design. Heaven sent. A holy attempt to spark the spirits of middle-aged men trapped in the mundane. The bottle of booze left at the recovering alcoholic’s door with the anonymous Merry Christmas card—God’s doing. The mailman accidently delivering the neighbor’s copy of Mothering magazine to the couple desperately trying to get pregnant—God did it. All the boxes filled with past expiration date food handed out to the hungry and homeless—yep, God’s work.

scratch off—
one number shy
of the big win

by Jeffrey Winke
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Jeffrey Winke: How It Smells and Feels

.

They create an aesthetically-pleasing, harmonious pattern. Neatly stacked columns. These wooden palettes are tethered tightly to the flatbed heading at a timetable’s ordained speed on this concrete interstate. The palettes are brand new. Direct from the factory where the construction pattern is followed in endless repetition to form their universal shape. The pinewood is so fresh that one can imagine how it smells and feels, the splinters lodging themselves in the top layers of skin, even in tough calloused hands. No scuff marks from forklift drivers fatigued from late night drinking. No grease stains from used machine parts carelessly tossed during quick repairs. No sticky spills from tipped-over Big Gulp-size Mountain Dews, carelessly kicked over as the foreman scatters lounging workers with a “getbacktowork” growl. These pristine, sculpturally perfect palettes are on their way to some company where they will be weighted down with the industrial output of a fair day’s work.

.

fresh scent

in the laundry basket

a cat

.

by Jeffrey Winke

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Jeffrey Winke: Keeps Hammering the Dull

He tries to kill the flies before most customers arrive. You can hear the thwack, thwack, thwack as he chases a slow-moving fat one that’s on a late autumn suicide mission. The stupid thing keeps hammering the dull, grimy windowpane hell-bent on achieving a deadly concussion before a thwack will splat the life out of it. The bartender clearly isn’t a Buddhist. The broken window pane will never get fixed, because it’s way too big a deal to dismantle the window frame in order to get a clear shot at the pane. The bartender chuckles at his cleverness when he thinks: What a pain this pane would be to fix.

good-ol’-boy bar—
I mess with them,
order a chardonnay

.

..
by Jeffrey Winke
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Jeffrey Winke: ELECTRIC-GREEN CHOKERS

The punch-metal gray-steel guard station looks formidable at the entrance to the intermodal station. It is cold, institutional. Two guards wearing reflective blue jumpsuits have a commanding view through the bullet-proof plate glass. A pleasant-looking couple tentatively approaches the station. They carry small, scuffed leather suitcases. Their electric-green chokers glow—alerting the guards of their threat status. Green indicates mild, yellow medium, and red’s a severe threat. The man speaks softly through the long, slender voice cone, “We wish passage to GADANK.” He wonders if he has been heard. He has. With a menacing leer, Guard A slowly appraises them, focusing his beady eyes on the young woman before sending a mild shock to her choker. “And what will YOU do to earn passage?” he asks the startled woman.

darkening office—
because he can, he tells her
to work overtime

by Jeffrey Winke
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Jeffrey Winke: IN A SLURRED-WORD STATE

Deep evening. I pretend it’s the wind flowing through the shed’s saw-tooth roof rather than her raspy voice. She’s nagging. This time for him to drive the half-dozen blocks to buy a pack of Chesterfields from the Shell station. She smoked the last one while frying up the pork chops and onions that they ate with enough beer to keep them in a slurred-word state. The brandy bottle’s seal is broken. The night will eventually end when they both pass out or exhaust themselves from the yelling and him sobbing “why did you have to do it with him—with all the men out there—why with him?”

same high ledge
same nightmare depth
same fall

by Jeffrey Winke
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Jeffrey Winke: I HAD SAID WHAT YOU HAD SAID

.

There wasn’t much that could be said that hasn’t been said, he said. She said, What should have been said wasn’t said. I said what I thought had to be said, he said. But you could have said what needed to be said, she said. He said, I thought I had said what you had said I should have said. No you said what I hadn’t expected to be said, she said. But I said I was sorry, he said. But you could have said you were sorry well before you said what you said, she said. But I said, I’m sorry, he said. But it was said too late, she said.

sneezing fit
she tries to tell her lover
she can’t come

by Jeffrey Winke
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Jeffrey Winke: WHO KNOWS MANLY

Tired. That’s after hoisting her portly 33-pound red and white basset hound puppy up the 13-step flight. The Brute sprained his right front leg while sprinting in cottontail hunting class. Ava doesn’t hunt but if The Brute gets properly trained, she’ll have an excuse to linger at the Hound & Hare Hunt Club, where she’ll meet a proper gentleman… a man who knows manly things like hunting and smoking a briar pipe filled with English Cavendish tobacco. How tough can it be? The Brute is only weeks away from being blue-ribbon certified by The American Hunting Basset Association. Ava figures that her entire future depends on The Brute’s field trials. Her pup is the key.

candle light
her red lips caress
the cognac snifter

by Jeffrey Winke
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Jeffrey Winke: GATHERS THE VOLUME UP

.

You speak German? She asks while biting her lower lip in faux perplexity while staring at the well-worn splayed cover of Traktat über kritische Vernunft, by Hans Albert. He quickly gathers the volume up and inserts an old St. Louis MetroBus transfer stub to hold his place. She giggles a bit as he deftly unhooks her vintage charcoal pencil skirt, releasing her from her afternoon appointment, while steering her hips to the nearby rolled-arm silk-upholstery white settee.

.

penthouse view

sound of seagulls

everywhere

by Jeffrey Winke

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Jeffrey Winke: POSSESSES THE AMUSING AFFINITY

.

With the very real concern of a manic relapse occurring due to overexposure to a certain shade of boysenberry blue, the frizzy-haired young chef carefully re-sorts his shiny stainless steel collection of butcher, bread and cake knives before taking his bi-polar tawny pug, Rufus, out for a relaxing walk down the tree-canopied lane on the way to the canine shrink who suffers from a digestive disorder and possesses the amusing affinity for wearing mismatched plaids.

full moon

above the sidewalk tables—

candles blown out

by Jefffrey Winke
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Jeffrey Winke: REFLECTIVE TAPE STRIPES AROUND EACH LEG

With the 18-inch red glowing parking wand visible, the stout presence of Ernest stands solid in the dark boulevard wearing his fluorescent-yellow breathable safety pants with two horizontal reflective tape stripes around each leg that makes him feel god-like powerful while directing the steady flow of luxury automobiles streaming their headlights into the gated parking lot where he occasionally—just for fun—halts a shiny black Jaguar XK to a full stop to leer at the strapless twenty-something trophy sitting in the passenger seat while growling "you gotta slow down, bud-DEE" to the silver-haired captain of industry who glares at Ernest with utmost contempt.

closing time
bartender collects empties
filled with stories

by Jeffrey Winke
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Jeffrey Winke: TO ANSWER FORTHRIGHTLY

With her long, slender index finger curling a thick strand of auburn highlighted silky-soft blonde hair, she intently ponders the white-glowing screen on her fluorescent-pink designer laptop and bends her brain to answer forthrightly the 263 revealing questions that will match her to the perfect guy who will genuinely appreciate her carefully considered response to Religion? as she daintily taps the ivory-color QWERTY keyboard one key at a time to spell: f-a-l-l-i-b-i-l-i-s-t.

in the mirror
she sees him
see her

by Jeffrey Winke
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Jeffrey Winke: HOLD A CREASE NO MATTER WHAT

The P.A. is distorted—much like a voice underwater broadcast into a cavernous room. He says something about the nefarious ilk lurking in the shadows being prohibited. No one understands. The words are so distorted and even those who do hear don’t quite believe what they hear. In the fluorescent-lit back office, where the P.A. sound system is located, the clunky scratched-up green metal desk is scattered with current issues of Metaphysics Today, Anti Magazine, and The Economist along with stacks of surrealist literature and absurdist philosophy and a pyramid of empty Mountain Dew cans. He is a low-paid security officer with a genuinely whacked worldview. He smartly wears the proper polyester navy blue pants that hold a crease no matter what and the obligatory ill-fitting blue shirt with epaulets and the reinforced double eyelets where his security badge hangs. With his no-choke, clip-on tie, he smiles bravely in the face of danger, which today comes in the form of an angry old woman wielding a nasty-looking black-lacquer maple walking stick topped by a silver alchemist skull.

dirty aisle
smell of lemon cleaner
from the shelf stock

by Jeffrey Winke
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Jeffrey Winke: CURLED UP IN THE EMBRACE

Indelibly kissed by fog, her silky, cool, glowing skin makes her allure intoxicating. When she parts her glistening pink lips to whisper the words, all leggy and curled up in the embrace of the mustard-color soft-leather armchair, she has only to avert her dream-laden, dark-eyed gaze to any of the eager-to-please and her most obscure, unattainable desire will be attained. Seduction is thrice promised but never fulfilled. She relishes the tease as delayed payback for the roly-poly, fat-girl teasing heaped meanly upon her younger self. She will never forget, never forgive.

quickie mart
silver crumbs from a crumpled
scratch off

by Jeffrey Winke
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Jeffrey Winke: A DOE-EYED AH-HA HEAD NOD

.

It’s a modest lilac-blue spiral tattooed on her smooth upper inner thigh. A symbol of possession. A chattel mark acquired a few wild years ago — “voluntarily,” she adds with moisture-kissed lips and a doe-eyed ah-ha head nod. The details of that rural upstate period are milky-white foggy at best. She reaches for a seagull-beige, handle-less pottery teacup and delicately sips from the steaming souchong. “There were things I did … unselfish acts of passion ...” Her yearning dark brown eyes, framed by tussles of walnut color shoulder-length hair, scan her cozy efficiency in the red-brick downtown boarding house and light on a full-size framed map of El Salvador. She has fond Salvadorian memories of volcanic-black sand and the heat it holds into the deep night. She stretches into a soft leather jacket, grabs a thick, cheetah-print folder and leaves but a hint of her cheeks on the seat cushion. The door clicks shut behind her.

listening. . .
thunder fades
into itself
.

.
by Jeffrey Winke
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Jeffrey Winke: BELOW THE SHALLOW ARC

.

Impassively displayed on the plum, sponge-painted smooth plaster wall near the Winsome antique walnut half-moon console table and tastefully below the shallow arc of yellow light from the tarnished brass and frosted-glass wall sconce it hangs soberly on a repurposed 1-1/2-inch, 18-gauge galvanized-finish brad nail in a baroque-style, burnished black wood certificate-frame that befits the overwhelming accomplished pride of Oliver & Jennifer Salmoniski: Successful Graduates of the Mongoose Marital Institute’s “Re-Tingle” Weekend for Restoring Verve, Vitality and Vigor in Loving Relationships.

paying cash
the desk clerk
thanks John Smith
.

by Jeffrey Winke
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Jeffrey Winke: DESTINED FOR PICKET-FENCE TRANQUILITY

.

The pretty boy enters and the ladies behind the counter swoon. He represents an armful of unfulfilled longing. They seek vicarious fulfillment through his tall boyish smiling muscular looks. He’s their connection to their vanished youth, so any mention of his girlfriend perks them up. The big question is on their minds, but not his. He lives for Monday night football, gelling his hair, and poking his girlfriend who he’ll never marry. The ladies think he’s a sweet boy destined for picket-fence tranquility. He thinks of himself as a player … a rambling rogue that can get any large-breasted girl he wants. The ladies ask when they’ll meet his girlfriend. With an artfully practiced bashful grin, he says “next time.” They all know it won’t happen, but the ritual of collusion wouldn’t be complete without it.

whisper of scent

vase full of lilacs

a room away

by Jeffrey Winke

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Jeffrey Winke: ANTICIPATION OF SEEING HIM SEEING HER

.

“Full of conflicting ideas” best describes her. She knows daddy won’t buy her an Appaloosa, but the promise of life-long happiness is one solid, defining worldview she’ll wrestle anyone to the mud to defend. The perfect man is real to her and, yes, she believes in love at first sight. That’s why she’s never shy about scanning crowds with anticipation of seeing him seeing her and WHAMO—the whole trunk of Chinese fireworks igniting at once. She seeks eye contact with only tall, fit and chisel-chin handsome guys. There’s no way the perfect mate for her could be short, plump, or myopic – no way! She soon turns 29 and her plan to be married, with two kids and a SUV parked in the drive of an over-sized suburban home by age 30, is looking unreal, but not impossible. As she reflects, there are only two men showing earnest interest: Marino, a Romanian circus performer, she met at the big-top two years ago when it was in town, and Ernie the bespectacled 43-year-old bachelor in Accounting who lives with mom. It’s a matter of time, but it will happen she tells herself before burying her glistening, mascara-smudged eyes into a wad of Kleenex.

it smolders –

snuffed cigarette

from her hand
.

.

by Jeffrey Winke
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Jeffrey Winke: NOSTRILS HOVERING OUT

.

“She’s quite accomplished in the choral arts,” her queen-size mother would sniff with an air of superiority, while waving a bejeweled hand about. I remember looking up to see the perfect ovals of her nostrils hovering out from her fleshy pink face as it de-wrinkled from over-enunciating “arts.” I was never a friend of Margaret Katherine. But I didn’t make fun of her like the other kids, when she was called and waddled out early for voice lessons or choral practice. The black-habit nuns didn't hear the nastiness or ignored it. Margaret Katherine never graduated from Our Lady of Immaculate Grace grade school. She and her family moved “out of state.” Recently, I was reading a Wikipedia entry on my favorite punk band, Your Middle Digit, when it hit me. The band’s writhing vixen lead singer, Maggi K, who I had an enormous crush on, is Margaret Katherine.

new home

the junk store lamp

looks trendy

by Jeffrey Winke

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Jeffrey Winke: THINKS WHILE GROWING IMPATIENT

.

The crinkle sound is barely audible, but the dog hears it and perks her ears. The tall alien is preoccupied. With one of several lipless mouths it’s busy chewing on a one-pound bag of Twizzlers® artificially-flavored cherry bites – red licorice. Its content-analyzing mastication glands find little nutritional value. “Another oddity,” it muses . . . when it hears the low rumbling growl of the dog slowly padding down the carpeted hallway under a gallery of family photos –everyone looks happy, even Uncle Gary who had bit the end of a Glock last year. “Any time Anja,” the tall alien thinks while growing impatient at the designated pick-up point on the designated day at the exact designated time.

brisk rain –

she protects a letter

to an old friend

by Jeffrey Winke

Milwaukee, Wisconsin