After Shrimp
Back at the honeymoon suite
we’ve left no stone unturned
but still can’t find the magic
we came in with, fantasies
the present has reduced
to a pair of lace panties
slung on the chair’s back,
empty packs of Pall Mall’s
and mixed whisky miniatures,
allure like Red Lobster leftovers
spoiling on the tabletops, the floor,
in the shower, these places we came
together as closely as skin consents
—and to be bellyaching now as if
we expected this or anything else
to be as endless as all that shrimp.
Jimmy Huff is a writer and musician from the Missouri Ozarks, with a warm place in his liver for scotch whisky. Jimmy’s stories, poems, and essays have received multiple Pushcart Prize and Best-of nominations and appear or are forthcoming in Jersey Devil Press, Star 82 Review, Third Flatiron Anthologies, and elsewhere.