Prescription label warning

I took a pill for depression. The first side effect was that I had to paint a stranger’s house red. There were different side effects each time I took my depression prescription medication. Another side effect was that I had to get a colorful tattoo of a bull goring a matador as a sleeve on my right arm. My least favorite side effect after downing a pill was searching for gold teeth at the bottom of the Ohio River. I ended up finding three gold molars. I sold all three at a pawn shop for peanuts, which I then fed to my gluttonous neighbor, who reminded me of a starving elephant.  

ξ

As advertised

When I saw a herd of camels on fire a few hundred meters away, 
I called my first cousin, who was a rainmaker. 
We spoke for twenty seconds, then I hung up, ready to save the day. 
Immediately after I finished the ritual as instructed,
a meteorite crashed into the camels, wiping them out 
and momentarily blinding me. I called my cousin back.
“Did it work?” 
Before I could reply, it started to rain.
“Yes,” I said. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Then, my cousin hung up. 

ξ

Feliz cumpleaños 

A monstrous hand reached through the concrete wall to try and take my soul, but it took Johnnie’s soul instead. It happened at my forty-third birthday celebration. Somehow, I was to blame. That always seemed to be the public opinion around these parts. Let’s blame Steven for every strange occurrence. Like when a meteor decimated the nearby town of Albinder. The local paper tried to place the blame solely on my shoulders because I had publicly cursed that Godforsaken place at the local watering hole while drinking the night prior. That was pure coincidence. I had also blessed the nearby town of Markin, and apart from the one thousand frogs made out of pure gold that appeared in the city center a mere three hours after I blessed it, nothing good ever became of that saintly town.

ξ

Steve Castro's debut poetry collection, Blue Whale Phenomena, was published by Otis Books, 2019 (Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, CA). Poetry in Water~Stone Review; Plume; Forklift, Ohio; Green Mountains Review; DIAGRAM; The Florida Review; Eye to the Telescope; etc. Three Distinguished Pushcart Contributing Editors –– Maura Stanton (2014), Bob Hicok (2020), and Christopher Citro (2021) –– have nominated Steve Castro for a Pushcart Prize. Maura Stanton wrote, "Steve Castro is a contemporary surrealist in the spirit of James Tate and Russell Edson and Charles Simic." Birthplace: Costa Rica.