it all started in the eighties
with mom and her cheap prescription
sunglasses phase and her with a flyswatter
when i first saw the fairy well mom couldn’t
and i think she had gotten winged in the flailing
the fairy of course and not mom and mom sure 
couldn’t see a thing she thought it was some fly maybe 
a firefly but no it was pretty much a fairy a fairy like in 
a flying one and a little matching wand all lit up
and i thought i had lost it just lost it but they say you can
see them sometimes and it’s not always people who need
help one wallop from that swatter and it would have been 
nosedive city or wherever fairies go when they’re crushed
against kitchen counters or cabinets or stung in drawers or
swatted with a heavy duty blue plastic flyswatter designed
to best wasps and bees or the odd hornet well that was the beginning
of a long friendship and who knew who knew that a fairy could
get me through my teenage dating years and helped me through
heartbreak when my old beau mark strayed with a cheerleader and
let me tell you that fairy and her wand well let’s say the guys in the locker room
wondered why he used well not much other than a peanut shell and an 
old ringer elastic band as a jockstrap after all the heartache he caused and
the tears too the tears too let’s say mark ended up in reduced circumstances
and maybe it wasn’t fair but that’s fairies and their wands a terrible temper
even though they’re shiny and cute and well just so bright and now right 
up until now and i see those damn flashers behind me and i must have been
a little heavy on the pedal and a little help my dear with that little wand of
yours

i clocked you going 79 in a 55 zone ma’am 

are you sure there you handsome dear  you sure must work out with those 
strong arms of yours take another look at your gizmo 

there must be a mistake it says 54 and i’m sorry ma’am i could’ve sworn

well with that shirt and those arms of yours why don’t you just tell me you’re
sorry and sweeten the pot a girl has been praying all day for a strawberry margarita
and you might just be big and strong and man enough to buy a girl one 

[mike sluchinski is a recent pushcart prize nominee and grateful to be read in mantis, failed haiku, inlandia journal, kaleidotrope, eternal haunted summer, the wave (kelp), the literary review of canada, the coachella review, welter, poemeleon, lit shark, proud to be vol. 13, the ekphrastic review, mmpp (meow meow pow pow), kelp journal, the fib review, syncopation lit. journal, south florida poetry journal (soflopojo), freefall, pulpmag, in parentheses, and more coming!]