Jeffrey H MacLachlan

Connoisseur Smokes Medok Cigarettes

Soviet advertisement, 1925

Every day I wake up and smoke. It's a ritual
one enjoys when stuck in a loop. Six fifteen

on the dot. Every day I wake up and smoke;
it's a ritual one lavishes. One morning I used

Lenin's war portrait as a proletariat tray.
He accumulated a cowlick as tapped ashes

stuck in a loop. I wake up. I smoke. I passed
out one morning into the ashtray. Six fifteen

on the dot. I jolt awake and burst my face
through the yellow wall of our bedroom.

The wallpaper spiral ribbons below my neck
as a clumsy tie loop and now I'm stuck. I'm

a connoisseur of six fifteen on the dot.
Like Stalin I wake up and smoke every

shift to endure meetings with the ritual
of tobacco breaks. My wife said the first

time she kissed a smoker, she stoked
his internal bonfire with her breath in

a loop. It's a ritual one enjoys. I wake
up from envisioning this and shift for

a cigarette at six fifteen on the dot. My
yellow teeth rows are stuck in a loop.

I'm a smoke break connoisseur.
For fifteen minutes, I accumulate

ash-mist cowlicks and stargaze
lamenting a heaven stuck on every

dot. I accumulate shots of samogan
and my eyes ash after six blinks—

jolting awake with fifteen clumsy dots.
My wife says the first time she kissed a

smoker, New Year midnight fireworks
lavished six linked stars with yellow

Columbine garlands so her heart
spiderwebbed ash. In yellow light,

the boy resembled Lenin. Then she
laments fifteen seconds of samogan.

Her internal kiss loop. Every day I wake and
smoke. One accumulates rituals when stuck.

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Jeffrey H MacLachlan also has recent work in New Ohio Review, the minnesota review, Santa Clara Review, among others. He is a Senior Lecturer of literature at Georgia College & State University.