governor / mayor

the glass fountain is pouring liquid hard candy  
into my sensitive habitat  

the concrete path turns to dust
and poised in the saddle I consider if this terrain might flip me on my ass  

I find the cave  
it makes me want to play like a child  
or fuck and piss and do drugs  

I take pictures with two old tangerines from my fridge  
I place them in the crevices of my body  
and assign their personalities  

the other people seem not to be so tethered  
what I always want from conversations with strangers  
is to get out of them  

the tips of the waves of my feelings are the melting sparkle that I ride
I use as a caption the confetti garbage overflowing into installation  

if there are other people in this poem  
their faces are the blurred nipples winking thru the foamy mesh  
of an advertisement for bras  

it all parades thru my mind in waves that sometimes slide in nice  
or sometimes crash in hard  
slapping me like the governor slaps the mayor in the face  

oh! see how they make love tenderly without taking off their suits  
spilling their erotic cocktail all over the press conference  

I can pretend not to notice their eyes  
half lidded with intoxicated feeling  
or try to ignore the random men in shorts  

as they stare I eat the bag  
of mostly airy flavors 
and recall the young hipster throuple I saw that one time  

the sand is filled with mysterious horrors  
but most of them have been beaten into gesture  

behold the single dark pubic hair  
inches from my face we lock eyes  
& because I have visited the European Wax Center  
I know it is not mine  

you can look at something and see it any way you like  
the miniature barren landscape  
the light coming through the curve as it rolls predictably  

one might know very little about me  
but guess what I am up to  

people tell me I am “of the water” and that I “must return”  
the water is my feeling  
I hold my feeling in a cup  
the cup I hold is a citrus peel  

a random man in shorts shares his thought with me  
cigar smoke follows his gaze as far as bike can ride  

extra foam and three bubbles in a shell  
the bubbles look like someone else’s fear  

ankle deep I am surprised  
though I have felt the feeling  
many times

what was the point of that hike  

I think this is a fossil  
500 million years ago the world was a swamp 
and algae covered everything  

a hot man with a gun and a knife  
trips on a little rock  
I hope a bear eats you  

I ate it in the river rocks  
swallowed water  
clung to you  
inner tube  

when I passed out in the elevator  
it was very simple  
I only wanted to sit down  
and nobody else wanted me to do that  

what’s the difference between two mountains 
it’s important for our relationship  
that we eat these sandwiches  

his name is Austin  
and he will be our server tonight  
he says he eats it without the ham, same as me

Allison Brainard is a writer and performance artist living in Brooklyn, NY. She is the creator of "Ex-Boyfriend Show", and the curator and host of interdisciplinary performance events such as "Do Something! With Allison Brainard" and "Presentation Time: Live."