This Is Why I Did
Not Send The Letter
… She’s aspirated linoleum and wooden
benches, unglued the doorstop and tangled up
metal hinges. She’s screamed in crooked pictures,
in puffs across the channel. The rash of her
under-legs splintered, paperclips in a rag
by the door. Her labial frenzy started
the clock at noon. Send money to keep her in
wordless 2x4s.
Much love, etc.
I filled up with a cyst the moment you called,
suffocated in ahoy ahoy because
I couldn’t dispatch it—no retrieve it from
silver fish, guttural magnets. I couldn’t
crawl between blue lines, slip into a teapot.
Frankincense bled between the parquet knots and
afterthoughts, hard stones to feed a pigeon—what
I could have said but chose not. Did I or
did I not do it on purpose? Ribs and teeth,
prickly burrs, the measure of the moon constant,
I took my position. Epitaphs get wet
from the trolleybus. Wind runs down excuses.
Tabletops can’t recall a chess set. I know
that’s not enough. Next to the phone in a pile
of current residents, it’s not my fault ink
spatters make fat spots. Let it stay like an old
man who speaks in numbers. He’s lived long enough.
Try and change a letter instead of a verb.
The hospital smells like cooked animals. There
are enough excuses. It’s difficult to
balance your own embryo