In the Back Garden

a poem by Roger B Rueda

He rolled out toxic there. Sometimes he made me savour the shots.
I liked to stare at ants bond
Themselves to gooey rings around the trunks
Of star apple trees.
But this verse tracks away from saying
What it desires to utter.
By the true fruit shrubbery, he had set
Serving dishes filled with snifter: a family formula
For sinking gastropods.
He taunted me to eat one,
Drooping lifelessly athwart a porcelain mould,
And when I said no, he cleaved to the plump grey cadaver
Like a dear heirloom, dulcet nugget, and
Plunged it in his maw. You just play that it’s               
An earthnut, the boring snail fell down across his tongue,
Or a bit you like: chewy candy, Glycyrrhiza glabra, a sticky maggot.
This is mock metaphor.
There was no whack. No patch and no goad.
This verse should be set inside the lavatory
Or the poorly lit
Lounge, at the rear windows with drawn gloominess.
This verse is about the darkest enchantment,
Castle in the sky. It knows how tongues can forward roll
Laboured spins. It knows how
Con tastes. He ingested
Hard and put his extremities in my locks: It’s like that with anything
You lay in your maw. I smelled
The toxic on his gasp. I sensed the iciness of the overlay floor
On my naked knees and heard the soar—
There is no creepy-crawly in this view, but the post of a jeer.