Poetry: Jack & Jill by Kyle Hemmings

Jack & Jill

two club kids

          jack & jill 

     their dreams have bar codes

& quick hands

they  vodka tongue-twist

   until dance of dawn

who’s counting? she thinks,

twelve bourbons fourteen bronsons & three left feet

between them

outside, under late-night neon

he almost rapes her reflection

she scars his shadow

   they walk home

                     pigeon-toed & forgetful

& leaking darkness

in a pre-war tenement, they're squatters,

a woolen blanket he shoplifted from Dollar & Dimes

    withholds their heat until the winter can kill them both.

in the morning, he wakes up to her skin secreting the scents

     of sleep & vomit

he gets a job as a temp

she freelances for an artist turned pimp

  jack proposes to her by email

   jill sends him a virus

later, they have mad make-up sex

           after he loses her childhood chia-pet

the honeymoon at the edge of town:

                  they're savants of selfies & i-phone apps

they watch late-night movies

until they can no longer

belch or laugh

the next morning

he watches the sunrise glow in her hair

    it sets his clocks back to when he could love

     w/out stipulations or rehearsals

to when names didn't matter

they grow toward middle-class comfort

   she's his best video game princess

she weeps at his Ponzi schemes

                  his unworkable e-cars

in the mirror

she tells her image she's pregnant

"Jill," she says, "you're full of life."

they smile

they beam

they blush

            she loses the baby

            to a technical glitch

after her overdose

he sleeps on hard foam memory

on an empty beach, he wonders

is she the ghost of all drowning men?

on his computer screen

her little girl avatar singing

 “you are my sunshine”

Kyle Hemmings has been published in Kyso Flash, Right Hand Pointing, Dark Entries, and elsewhere. He loves 60s garage bands, 50s sci-fi flicks, and street photography.