Velvet Flamingo Press
Insomnia spoons dark circles
out from under my eyes.
The hose runs a scar up my legs.
The skirt is my disguise.
Paper swings and catches my
finger like a hook;
the staple remover hisses open its fangs;
rubber bands mass like worms;
the amnesiac fax machine
gives me nothing but blank looks.
I buy a box of shortbread,
chew off little Girl Scout heads.
The corridor every day to the cubicle,
down the cubic-papered stairs
for beige breakfasts, and then back up--
popcorn furls like
goldfish with their curly fins.
I scrape a cream cheese planet
out of a paper cup.
Thunder every day,
pink words for pink light.
God tore off sheets of graph paper,
miles of it covered the world.
The plaster ran like a river of mud,
creatures tied to the sun,
reeds hardened into concrete pipes,
giant birds of prey nested in bales of wires
licking the backs of their fingernails.
Outer space is the insect's home--
they swarm on the city and
strip it of metal,
the size of diamonds with wings.
With never sun it's never dry,
damp sand rotting, silting into drifts,
not inner seashell-smell but a
beach of pigeon-leaving,
hairballs of feather,
sidewalks stained ammonia white,
a deep violet planetarium
prickly with wings.
For more information, email:
velvetflamingo@yahoo.com