Cloud Keeper sweeps last night’s stardust

into a bucket of glittering ash

and dumps it down

a double rainbow:

Sunshine in Aquarius,

Moonlight in Libra.

Cloud Keeper leans back

against the Caring Meter Reader,

listens to it chime,

and lights a glowing cigarette.

I may be trash but beneath the fluff

my insides shimmer

like garnet gemstones

on a silver chandelier.

Cloudkeeper cranes his neck

to gaze upon the blue beyond,

exhales a gust of purple smoke—

Gemini Rising:

I was born to live in a castle in the sky.

I am a Daughter of the Air:

we are formless specters, anxious angels

lingering on the head of a pin,

just waiting for a child to cry.

(God, anything to lighten the sentence,

God, anything to bring us closer to Heaven.)

Both me and my belly have

a thousand-yard stare.

I’m licensed—

Check the heart tattooed on my right ass cheek:

proof positive of my

mass

consumer

appeal.

A bear(er) of light,

designed by the American Greetings Corporation and

sponsored by Ronald Reagan,

in the era of Broadcasting

D e r e g u l a t i o n.

Do you like me?

(I like you, I like you!)

Does anybody like me?

EVERYBODY LIKES YOU.

Lisa Nohner is originally from Minnesota, and is an English Instructor at LSU. She specializes in teaching horror rhetoric and cinema. She holds an MFA from NMSU in Creative Writing: Prose. Her poems have been published Shit's Fucked Magazine, as well as in SJZ Vol. 1, 2, & 4. Some of her short fiction has appeared in Psychopomp magazine as well as Automata Review.