Christopher Honey

Pontiac Sunbird, 1994

A cockroach family was my car’s first tenants,

Making a home in the back, while I sat

Up front, a patient man, not charging rent.

This worked for all, just a single caveat:

When I would bring a girl inside, they ran

Screaming in tiny voices from the light.

No woman would return, no love began

But no desire they showed to make things right.

At last, my hand was forced. Intransigent

Conceited arthropods must go, I cried!

I am too virile to be abstinent!

Youth, too, like roaches, must enforce our pride.

Unscrupulous man that I am, I sold

It, hiding my small renters in arrears.

Shamelessly bartered my friends for gold

But privately, let fall all my sad tears.

Love, reader, I had, different, it’s true,

But vanity betrayed me, tricked this poor

Soul to place sex above all, yet I knew

What I did was beyond even base hauteur.

Forever is affection from a cockroach

But a man’s feelings false, made for reproach.

Christopher Honey was part of the inaugural cohort of the University of Saint Thomas’s MFA program. His poetry, essays, articles, reviews have appeared in numerous publications, including The Rumpus, The Building Trades News, Poetry South, and U.S. Catholic. He lives in Washington, DC with his wife and daughter.