One Day At The Flea Market Poem by Michael Philips

That gray morning I purchased a cheap electric
bass, the man with a friend on the Force
offering color enlargements of a
strangled young woman

A dark aesthetic from the line of red desert
sunset clouds and bluffs that is the long
strawberry bruise across
her neck

Sunshine from that day highlights her
cheek’s meadow of blonde
peach hair still gleaming
to life

My recoil reflex is a riptide undertow noxious as
open sewers, blackened further by her blithe
For Sale, an open casket among cast-off
utensils and chintzy artwork

The static image reappears like a long submerged
corpse floating before me when I see a
cheap sunburst electric bass
or now