Tipping the Scales

By Jessica Lee Alton

She smokes in your face just to be like that

Never wants to give you free advice

Asks for a dollar, a drink, a ride home

Twirls a wet lock around her thumb

Pulls out her fin just so she can trip you

Can’t hide that smell, razor blades, salt shakers

She wants your love, grants nothing in return

Can’t control her voracious appetite

ingesting friends like trinkets-baubles-spoons

Tries to pull you in with her siren song

Lips move-no sound-broken karaoke

You strain to listen, end up in her mouth

She swims you with the salmon south then north

Drops you at a gas station dumbfounded

Steals your car drunk splashes water at the moon

As you walk, you wonder how she drives

with that scaly turquoise mercurial tail

Copyright Credit: Poem copyright ©2021 by Jessica Lee Alton, “Tipping the Scales” from Ripe Literary Journal, Issue 01, October 2021.