The 23 Anaphylactic Perforations of D’Onofrio
Dennis Mahagin
1]
D’Onofrio,
in my attic, stomping his Doc Martens for the dust motes; it seems
he’s making quite a scene up there, shoving a naked hairy forearm
like Houdini through empty picture frames. Vince winces,
as though humerus-deep and scarified by busted window
panes. D’Onofrio grunts, and gropes for his reflection
in same.
2]
My second
cousin claimed he half-heartedly beat D’Onofrio
about the buttocks and shins with bricks
of Dove soap stuffed in a striped
tube sock, as an extra
in some Kubrick flick; D’Onofrio squealed
like a pregnant hyena, so the Best Boys used
their bag of tricks, softly cooing and rubbing
Vince down with Tiger Balm.
3]
D’Onofrio
wore root-beer-colored
high top Keds
with a much-too-tight
tuxedo at his traumatic
high school prom
in Miami.
4]
D’Onofrio shoved
the hairline electrode
in a frog leg, grinning
and shuddering
a bit,
when the AC
current spit,
and a camouflage-colored tendon
on the chrome table top in Biology lab
went from Medium
to Xtra Long.
5]
D’Onofrio
often comes
right
to the point
especially when
he knows
he’s in the
wrong.
6]
D’Onofrio was snooping around
when he stumbled upon my secret
closet where I keep the collection
of three hundred
bald caps
7]
D’Onofrio asked me:
Did you ever drink
ditch water as a little kid, or play “Operation”
all by yourself on lonesome Sunday afternoons?
8]
D’Onofrio rides
the Shetland pony side
saddle. D’Onofrio rides the bashful,
eyelash-batting Shetland
pony side saddle.
9]
When D’Onofrio’s infant nephew
in Boulder City had the colic,
D’Onofrio blew
a purple cloud
of bong hit smoke
with bits of pulverized pineapple
into the child’s beet-red, pudgy
and hideously pinched face.
10]
D’Onofrio bakes
his lasagna
three feet thick
with a whole hindquarter
of ground chuck, gallon jugs
of cottage cheese and homemade
pasta he pulls
lovingly like
wet lingerie
from an old
fashioned washer-
dryer that works upon
the principle of rolling
pins and
squeeze.
11]
Vince is crestfallen, since
it seems that once again he’s
forgotten to charge the battery in his accursed 3G chocolate
smart phone.
12]
D’Onofrio drag-raced
his dad’s precious Delta 88 station wagon until the U joint gave
way like a herniated intestine, and the pings and clanks and sinking
feeling with moth guts all a-drip on the spider-cracked
windshield making Everyman’s Rorschach blot.
13]
D’Onofrio sipped Southern Comfort and cold
blueberry syrup, bent double and dry heaving
on the grave of Jackson Pollock.
14]
D’Onofrio sits
in a pool of standing water,
waving about a lackluster
three-pronged
extension cord
like Lash Larue with low testosterone
and a lasso
for lament.
15]
D’Onofrio decided a long,
long time ago that Cream of Wheat
farina cereal in the early A.M. reminded him
of slow horrifying Death by Quicksand (sickly
concentric, centrifugal) and that he’d never
power-lunch under a barber pole,
nor bow for no man.
16]
D’Onofrio has a fake AK-47 that shoots
gin and juice, canned snakes, and plastic
pastel sea horses like swizzle sticks
at a Trader Vic’s.
17]
D’Onofrio teaches
Stanislavski Method Workshops in La Jolla,
where he tells his star-struck students
not to waste their time
being angry Oz apple trees with silver body paint, but rather
Lapsed Globe-Trotting Vegetarians with such violent cravings
for turkey and grease, it kick starts a fugue state, or
at least a series of horrific Grand Mal
seizures.
18]
D’Onofrio just offered you a choice
between a Bad Knuckle Forehead Noogie
or a magic trick involving amputation
of the thumb.
19]
D’Onofrio badly wishes to dance
The Bump.
20]
Sometimes
late at night, D’Onofrio hears
the lonesome summer wind
sough and sough
through aspen
tree branches and believes he
has had quite
enough.
21]
D’Onofrio feels
clean and sexy in a skin-tight
Honey Bee Tube Top, his eyes roll
back to the whites;
but that’s quite
all right.
22]
D’Onofrio is doing Tai Chi for the Brooklyn paparazzi
in a Hicks crosswalk strewn with used condoms, soggy
confetti and the chalk outline
of a dead body.
23]
It’s D’Onofrio’s
last stop; he pulls
the cheap chain
like a rip cord.
Our Vincent is bound
to get off.
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