GAMBLE RESPONSIBLY
Thus reads the electronic ad for the Trojan Ultra Thin value-pack. I forget to lock the bathroom door. At the park, River & I sculpt clay into untaxable beings. When I kill the beetle, it’s reborn with harder hands. To diversify my resume, I list hope as a skill. & when choosing between a rock & a hard place, I consult my throwing arm. Ecclesiastes: TIME & CHANCE HAPPEN TO THEM ALL. Solomon died at fifty-five. I wonder: are you sufficiently afraid? Someday I want a child. Monday I Google how to manifest. On the bus, a woman’s beer trickles beneath my feet. As if a body could take you that far. Written outside the bookstore: PICK UP AFTER DOG OR EAT IT! So close to the laundromat, I smell the socks screaming. IPhone Pastor reassures: IF YOU CAN DREAM IT, YOU CAN DO IT. I dreamt myself consorting with wealthy men to fuck a reindeer. Translation: fortune will ruin me. Post-coitus, we argue whether one person can touch another. Only after debts metastasize will the bank statements arrive. And god, now it rains. Now a man interrupts my weeping to ask: BRIDGET?
Cydni Thompson is a poet from Jamaica, Queens. She is entering her final year of her MFA at Queens College, and is the ’25-’26 Poetry Coalition Fellow at The Poetry Society of America. Her work has been featured in or is forthcoming from Poet Lore, poetry.onl, SWWIM, trampset, and elsewhere.