I must tell about
the pink flamingos
not the live ones
and not Audrey Hepburn
at a small cafe table,
and not the rusty chains
piled mysteriously next to them
— nesting material perhaps? —
because they gather there
beside the tracks
behind that scabby brick building
and stand quite patiently
just like they always did in their
previous lives, before
they retired, possibly to breed
bathtub ducklets, hatched from
plastic eggs, but always dreaming,
dreaming of Audrey Hepburn
and planning what they will order
when they meet her there
at that little round table
in the movie cafe
Kyla Houbolt‘s chapbook, But Then I Thought, is forthcoming from Above/ground Press http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/. Also forthcoming is chapbook Surviving Death, from Broken Spine Arts, https://thebrokenspine.co.uk/ in November, along with a re-release of the chapbook Dawn’s Fool. The chapbook Tuned is currently available from CCCP Chapbooks, here: https://cccpchapbooks.bigcartel.com/product/tuned-selected-poems-by-kyla-houbolt. More of Kyla’s work can be found on her linktree, https://linktr.ee/luaz_poet. She is on Twitter @luaz_poet