Stan Jones

The alarm clock startles Stan Jones,
a man whose belly’s too big for his pants,
and whose bed is too big for him.
He bought it years before, predicting the
arrival of his still-non-existent wife.
The bed thought Stan should buy another
more fitting for a solo dreamer—
it always thought Stan was more of
a mattress-in-a-race-car kind of guy. 

The alarm clock resented being thumped every
morning when it knew Stan had nowhere to be.

Stan’s comb imagined the badly-toupéd
news anchor he could have easily been
with a name like Stan Jones. But
it obliged as Stan redundantly used it
to smooth down what hair he had left.
The comb would have been grateful for a challenge.
Stan winked, and his reflection reciprocated.
His mirror loathed its involvement in this routine.

Stan fancies himself an inventor of sorts since
combining one and a half types of cereal, though
the bowl from which he ate it felt that adding
the marshmallows from one box to another
was less like inventing, and more like
a shortcut to type 2 diabetes.

Stan proudly displays his tragic collection
of all but eight Guinness Books of World Records.
Stan is sure his anthology is worthy of bragging
rights, which he uses with zeal—
the kind of fervent one-upmanship Stan’s
bookshelf has come to expect from him.

But, when the doorbell rang,
Stan’s effects ate their words as they watched
him accept the giant check with glee.
They were sorry they took him for granted;
they’d never do it again! But they knew
with his good luck that theirs had run out,
and there’d be replacements in every room. 

Nikkee Boyle, March 2010