Steven Schroeder
Oh Kay

Embrace me, letter K—you kannot eskape
for a smoke behind Kwik Way. (Okay, I’ll quit.)

Doctors have discovered a cancer cure before
the credits, but they pay to edit sex and quiet

into carcinogen prescriptions. We can play
strip Scrabble for cash, the capital third person

and tiles required for triple-word-score swears
or cryptology on squares anywhere, strutting

toward the bed's headboard to relax. No quay
for taxi catamaran confessions of a secret

nautical code. Pretending the second story
man is a squealer, coffee cups his tongue

to a conflagration, extracts that he craves facts
in newspaper columns. Comic page characters

exit stage left, tails and contrails the telltales,
conversation bubbles discarded and empty

of ventriloquism, dummied by excessive force
from handlers cramming hands. I can't lie

without a facsimile grin exposing my canines:
when I quarantine these lungs until capillaries

in my eyes explode and two tympanic cats
slink me into the blank, I know you're back.

***

Author's comment: This poem started as a crypto-love-poem that omitted a key letter for most of its length. It ended up being at least as much about crypticness (crypticism?) itself.

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