Contributor: Adrian Slonaker

- -
Play your tambourine,
bang your bongo!
The ghosts are exiled
to a cedar chest bolted securely
against prying eyes,
even your own.
The toy balloons have been released,
bright colors representing myriad moods
into whirling currents of serendipity and whim,
overwhelming dreary demons,
You've banished them for the last time;
with halcyon hope you toast the future
with get-up-and-go
and with cheek.


- - -
Adrian Slonaker lives in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, USA, working as a copywriter and copy editor, with interests that include vegetarian cooking, Slavic languages, Victorian horror fiction, wrestling, and 1960s pop music. Adrian's work has appeared in Better Than Starbucks, CC&D, Dodging the Rain, and Three Line Poetry.