SurVision Magazine
An international online magazine
that publishes Surrealist poetry in English.
Issue Eleven
STAN UPSHAW
On The Lanes
In Pensacola, at the Bowl-O-Rama,
needle-thin pin-boys pass their time
smoking in the droning
aparati of the machines.
The landscapes of their lives inhabited
by fleshy men with lonely fingers,
slots, lotteries, the ecstatic jackpots of the poor.
Their lives unfold with the grim inevitability
of the crashing ball.
Bowl-O-Rama girls dance unremarkably,
from a distance they are still.
Their arms hang like delicate cotton
anchors. Their nipples
cry from unlove
inside their satin prisons.
Their skin pulses in time
to the lights of the arcade.
When the boys step onto the lanes,
they do so without ever
opening their eyes.
Stan Upshaw lives in Northern California. He studied poetry at California State University, Chico, before attending the creative writing program at McNeese State in Lake Charles, Louisiana. He edits an arts blog, Alakazam. This is the first publication of his poetry.
