Laughing
Next to me my boyfriend wakes up laughing.
He says sleep makes him hold it back
because he might wake others up.
He says in some beds, it’s against the law
and you can wake up with a ticket
under your pillow or stuck in your ass crack.
Now he’s got me laughing and the dog showing
his back teeth and drooling. Now the dog
is pissing himself. Without so much
as a tickle, my boyfriend and I are too.
We get out the garden hose to hose off.
Next thing you know the whole neighborhood
is out washing their cars, laughing
at the spots they’ve missed on their fenders.
Fortunately the city shuts the water off
and my boyfriend and I check into a motel
until everything dries out. There’s where we see
ourselves on the 6 o’clock news holding back
laughing at the anchor’s gone limp coiffure.
—Charles Springer
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Charles Springer has degrees in anthropology and is an award-winning painter. A Pushcart Prize nominee, he is widely published in the small presses. His first collection, Juice, is forthcoming from Knut House Press. He writes from Pennsylvania.