03-24-2017, 01:57 AM
I bought a doll today—
she's cloth with a white eyelet dress
and a matching Sunday bonnet.
I named her Kyrielle Elise.
I'll slowly ruin her.
It can't just be me that wants to thread
a series of cuss words together
and call it a rondolet.
Mother tried to teach me to sew,
grow my patience for precision-
cutting patterns. She relented
when I broke the sewing machine's needle.
Don't you ever itch to start bitching
people out mid ghazal? It can't just be me.
Does the ceiling fan resume its metronomic clicking,
and the cat shock you with her tail
while she seduces your leg?
Maybe your neighbor's trash can
scrapes the pavement like a dragging muffler
as they heave it clumsily
to the curb.
I imagine myself melding with a madrigal
the way a man merges with his machine,
like Chuck Yeager and his Glamorous Glennis,
punching a hole in the sky.
I could meld with a machine
if I burned alive in its wreckage.
My refrains would have been the glory
of a 1840's schoolmarm: they snore
like the moral for a boring story.
Exploring Elizabethans makes me feel
like I'm living my nightmare
where I try to call emergency
but my fingers won't push the numbers
in the right order. In a sudden volta
that can only be achieved in dreams,
I realize that I'm not holding a phone
but a blender, and my conceit
is colorless inside. Please confess:
it's not just me.
she's cloth with a white eyelet dress
and a matching Sunday bonnet.
I named her Kyrielle Elise.
I'll slowly ruin her.
It can't just be me that wants to thread
a series of cuss words together
and call it a rondolet.
Mother tried to teach me to sew,
grow my patience for precision-
cutting patterns. She relented
when I broke the sewing machine's needle.
Don't you ever itch to start bitching
people out mid ghazal? It can't just be me.
Does the ceiling fan resume its metronomic clicking,
and the cat shock you with her tail
while she seduces your leg?
Maybe your neighbor's trash can
scrapes the pavement like a dragging muffler
as they heave it clumsily
to the curb.
I imagine myself melding with a madrigal
the way a man merges with his machine,
like Chuck Yeager and his Glamorous Glennis,
punching a hole in the sky.
I could meld with a machine
if I burned alive in its wreckage.
My refrains would have been the glory
of a 1840's schoolmarm: they snore
like the moral for a boring story.
Exploring Elizabethans makes me feel
like I'm living my nightmare
where I try to call emergency
but my fingers won't push the numbers
in the right order. In a sudden volta
that can only be achieved in dreams,
I realize that I'm not holding a phone
but a blender, and my conceit
is colorless inside. Please confess:
it's not just me.