Tommy Jacobi

The Casino


Maybe when the blue man walks out
of his blue house into blue light
and the glass woman’s glass eyes
are her mother’s eyes, and all
night long all the little animals push their little
ambulances down the street,
maybe then I’ll drink my little glass
filled with ashes. When the deaf start speaking
and the deaf stop speaking and the deaf can't
speak any more
and when the deaf start speaking and the deaf
start speaking and the deaf can’t sleep any more,
I guess that’s when you pick up your icepick
and make all your icepick’s mistakes.
There's an extension cord in the river
fatter than life. You want to cut through it.
You can see your own chalk apparitions
in the water.

Years later, you’re on
the Effects Channel and you look
afraid. Something is causing me, you say.
Sometimes I think that there’s beauty
and sometimes I think that there’s beauty on drugs.
I think I can feel my blood pushing on the pins
of the television. The casino drones on and on.
You say, the opposite of outside is more outside.
The opposite of inside is more outside.
You say in this moment absolutely everything
I ever wanted to say. I look around.
There’s a fist outside
the size of a planet. I store my guts
in a trash bag and try to move on.
You’ve got your good things
and you’ve got mine. The TV is small.
I sleep with the brain of a cannibal but
I try not to move.

Tommy Jacobi lives in Baton Rouge, where he goes to LSU. He co-edits Delta, the undergraduate literary journal, with Blake Stephens.