David Spicer

TAZ

I’ve caught my share of crooks:
bank robbers, grifters, puppet masters,
loudmouth frauds. I don't hesitate
to feed my ego by bustin' their cornflake
balls even more. My favorite was a barmaid
named Tasmania who answered my questions
in the box with a pause and then,
Say what, boss?
and sometimes said,
I'd love to kiss your mustache because you
make me hotter than a horny furnace.
She gazed out to Main Street and asked,
Do you like cemeteries?
Why? I said.
Because gravestones remind me
of mushrooms, Deputy, and I wanna eat you.
Back to business, Taz. Can I call you that?
She said, Sure. Impress me.
Why'd you to try to pass
off the grape juice for wine? I asked.
Lawyer, she said.
I frowned like a famine in a desert.
Lumbered toward the door.
Hey, Penny Dreadful, she said,
tell me when my limo's here,
’cause you ain't got a blind steer's chance
in Pamplona of nailin' me with your bullshit.


Gerald So reads "Taz":



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David confesses: "I watch a lot of Investigation Discovery shows, and they rarely disappoint. I've always been fascinated by the interrogations that cops conduct and the idea of what would happen if a totally nihilistic, uncooperative suspect and a tough-guy cop ran into each other in 'the box'. And thus 'Taz' was born."

DAVID SPICER has poems in Chiron Review, Alcatraz, Gargoyle, unbroken, Raw, Rat’s Ass Review, The Ginger Collect, Easy Street, Yellow Mama, Ploughshares, Scab, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. He is the author of Everybody Has a Story and five chapbooks; his latest chapbook is From the Limbs of a Pear Tree, available from Flutter Press.