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David Spicer lives in Memphis with his wife and calico cat, where he writes, eats, sleeps, and reads poems.

Zipper Lady
by David Spicer
 

On your television news show, you face the lens each week                        
in a styled jacket: one episode it’s taupe suede with zippered pockets

near your waist. Next time, a black leather motorcycle number,
a zipper from each shoulder ending at the southern mouth

of the middle zipper hugging your neck. I’ve watched you, Zipper
Lady, in your zone, never wearing the same zippered jacket twice.

How many zillion do you own? Your latest: Spring-green with four
zippered pockets on your chest. And the cherry with lapels that overlap,
 
zippers running like silver rivers. Oh, Zipper Lady, five-hundred-dollar
hair cascading past your collarbone, I think I love your zoomy zippers,

your raspy one-line zingers, those drowsy caramel eyes complementing
my favorite zippered jacket: a chocolate mosaic of zigs and zags

of zippers that lightning-bolt your ribs. Why do you adore them,
my Zipper Love? Do they conceal secrets from the prying eyes

of paparazzi? Zipper Lady, I imagine visiting your 30×30
zippered-jacket zoo in a mansion looming from a mountain

on Zipper Lane, sporting my black zipper duster a Baldwin
boy brandished in Harley Davidson and The Marlboro Man.

Call me crazy, but I paid ten G’s for that baby. Could we swap?
Or zip-talk zippers, our words interlocking teeth, gliding,

biding time, meshing smoother than the best-oiled zipper-slider,
and then we’d listen to ZZ Top, sip some Zinfandel and doze,

dreaming twin dreams of ten dozen colored zippered jackets
that wave from a parade of clouds above the zippered horizon.

ets

Eben Wood