Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

By Ben Sloan

An old woman now wedged into
the porta-potty-sized cockpit 
of her life, still gawking admiringly 
at a sky-size portrait of Elvis 
painted on black velvet 
whose lifeblood is a million tail lights 
creeping along one after another 
in long lines, grids, and cloverleafs 
as far as the eye can see, 
air going in and out of her nose like a yoyo, 
heart a sponge happily soaking up blood 
squeezed out one hundred thousand times a day. 
This is all just to say she is still up there 
flying along, singing a song.

From southeast Missouri, Ben Sloan has an MFA from Brooklyn College, where he studied with John Ashbery, and a PhD from the City University of New York Graduate Center. "The Road Home," a chapbook of his poetry, was published in 2017 by Thirty West Publishing House. Currently living in Charlottesville, Virginia, he teaches at Piedmont Virginia Community College, the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women, the Buckingham Correctional Center, and the Dillwyn Correctional Center.