Jane Flett

The Osiris Myth

I've been kicking up an attitude at the
all-night-burger day-glo dream park.
I've been causing a stir.
Osiris says, “I can't get the night off, my dustbowl princess,”
flips an ostrich burger
hits it in the air like a pinball, like a stuck onion ring swept from the floor,
like a smoke ring lasso.
I am bored.
Dustbowl bored.
“What about a fast car,” I say, “what about a cliff?”
Osiris got plenty time to flip and sink round this town
—Osiris gonna live forever—
but as for me, I just don't know.
“Wait,” says Osiris,
“Let me cut you a piece of pie,
cherry pie for my red cheek special agent sinner.”
Damn you, Osiris.
I don't know why I stick around this two horse hole.
I sit in the booth, warm leatherette; it sticks like sick to the backs of my calves.
“Will you drive me back to your cardboard door when the last quick flip has hit the deck?”
Maybe I'm a fool to wait, because my whole life is just a whole life
and not an ever-unfurling snake with a hunger for tail.
Maybe I'm a fool—I hear even Isis spent many a night
with a little gold substitute tucked in her purse.
I hear the catfish swallowed it.
You think Osiris is a nice bloke, but in the sticks we're sick for it,
we're putting up with the getting we've got.
Truth is, I'm a sucker for a smack in the face.
Truth is, I'm a sucker for the flail.

Jane Flett is a philosopher, cellist, and seamstress of most fetching stories. Her poetry features in Salt’s Best British Poetry 2012 and is available as a chapbook, Quick, to the Hothouse, from dancing girl press. Her fiction has been commissioned for BBC Radio, awarded the SBT New Writer Award, and performed at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. Find out more at http://janeflett.com.