David A. Bart - poems
  • Intro
  • Home
  • Kingdom Come
  • Tunnel of Love
  • Exit Now
  • The Passion
  • Texas Education
  • Dumb Supper
  • Good Year
  • Toys
  • Saint Michael and the Devil
  • Invisible Knights
  • The Rain Gauge
  • Ponder
  • Remainder
  • Green Ghost
  • December 13th
  • Dedication
  • Prevailing Wind
  • Dreamland 1911
  • 10
  • On the Median
  • These Things Happen
  • White Water
  • The October People
  • Scene from a Moral Panic
  • Estrellita
  • Another Ending
  • Bio. and credits

   

Picture
Tunnel of Love


One lumpen hand takes their ticket,
the other pulls a swollen rope
as each couple scrambles into a bobbing
gondola. Bright, soft enamel coats


the rotten wood. Rubber belts 
underwater roll them into the cave
of fiberglass ringed in pink mossy hearts,
the smell of fish, strobing cherry flashers.


Boys straddle their dates
on bench seats, grateful for the ride
in a chilled corridor lined with spring-loaded
skeletons and spelunker goblins

that hiss, lurch and send the girls
squirming away from ratcheting
clockwork arms and into a boy's
cagey embrace. Some secret machinery

under the current brings the gondolas back.
The riders teeth and eyes glitter in tawny
carnival light and a barker cajoles them
to take another ride into love's dark mouth.



Illya's Honey, Volume 17, #2, Fall/Winter



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