fish

It's like manufactured good times,
it's smiles bought from vending machines lined up
like dentures in a medicine cabinet of wannabe-youth grandparents.
They travel in a pack from place to place,
"what a good time" they say, slapping their gums at the waiters who carry the silver platters
of those clingy, used-smile dentures,
that come out on Friday nights.
They swim in a school of fish, not trying to escape but instead racing towards the net,
heavy rope falilng on their silvery scaled sequin slithering dresses.
Big-gummed fish gaping for hooks
for quick hook-ups when the next morning they'll be thrown off the boat
until the next "catch of the day."