PICTURE BOOK FOR AMBITIOUS FISH

by Quinn White

One morning before sunrise, Tom decided to move to Mexico.
Still in pajamas, he booked his flight for seven in business.

Aware that rash exits raise eyebrows,
Tom  trained his mustache to smile.

He drank four tall glasses of water. 
I’m coming back in time

for Mortimer’s graduation, Tom wrote his girlfriend
a note which he taped to the bathroom mirror.

Mortimer was Tom’s fish. Yesterday, Tom’s dad died.
The ticket cost five million dollars.

A kid, Tom found a Glen Miller CD in his dad’s car.
Ever since they’d liked big bands together.

“I hate guacamole!” Tom’s dad yelled at a church lunch.
Tom drank warm milk. Tom wrote Tom in pencil,

then erased it. Tom wrote everybody’s name in pencil,
erased everybody. He drew Alabama with shaving cream on his stomach,

razed his geography. You’ll miss the funeral, he wrote. Your dad
lives in Springville in a white house with too many birdfeeders. 

Tom ran out of erasers, but found soap wiped funeral
fine. He pulled on a pastel shirt, put in blue contact lenses.

Drove to his dad’s.
Ate a reasonable amount of drugs.
Lay in the cream shag of his dad’s den and floated.