PROSE POETRY
K ROBERTS
DEUCES WILD
Improbable, contradictory love: it flips like a poker card, two cardioid curves inverted in its corners, opposable as thumbs. She sees a necklace in Walmart, says it’s healing aquamarine, her birthstone. “Electroplated quartz,” he scoffs, “no more precious than a maple-colored whiskey flask embossed with Elixir of Life.” But he gave it to her in March, and in June when the mower broke and he wrangled spools of Astroturf to replace the back lawn, she tolerated this, the way she tolerates his saying A-mule-et. She tells him St. Patrick himself couldn’t have done better, banishing her allergies and the garter snakes. She likes how he recognizes belzebuls, worries about bees; how he brings her fuzzy caterpillars, and says they remind him of Hollywood starlets, in their jackets of fur.
K Roberts is a professional non-fiction writer and artist and a first reader in fiction at the Canadian magazine, Nunum.
