DELUXE CUBICLE

Picking up the axe, I smell like a bad wig. This always happens
when we are forming a new society. Everybody worships heavy cream,
which carries messages into our mouths and makes us want to burn
things to the ground. We’re foam freaks in the bomb shelter. We get thin
and secretly sentimental with the alcoholic gardener. You can call me
The Original Heat. I own a jejune mini skirt and think in screams.
It’s not easy running a society. It takes a toll on the big leagues.
You get lost in the rose, playing the slug motif. We found listening
devices in our cream. And what about us doppelgangers? My name
became the enemy’s name. So much for the observation deck.
I became the ticker tape thrown into the street.
Who knows who may leap from that window.

SEX-POSITIVE

I am a sex-positive
man at the races.
I count the people
who count the tickets.
I like to walk the booths
with clean hands, so
we can both touch the stub.
Everyone has a window
inside of them, and I want
to wash them all. I love
the smooth parts of skin
that don’t have hair or
lumps. The weird spots
I take pictures of. I
like anyone pretty still.
I take courses to learn
about skin, people
named Teddy Roosevelt,
the history of the surprise.
I have started a dude
ranch, made billboards.
My enduring legacy is now
me in a good old
feather bed. That laundry
pile is my consciousness,
and my soul is party-sized,
so there’s 200% more
of me to love. Love is just
a new hairdo, and Joey
here has the sharpest shears.
I once fell asleep in his shiny
swivel chair and dreamt
that we occupied a strip
mine in a tiny country
where everybody worked
and nobody loved.
I could not go to courses
on people named Teddy
Roosevelt, because of my life.
Now whenever I close
my eyes, it’s a zen party.
Like they say, if I wanted
someone to touch
my temple, I would have
built one, and I did.

MY EDUCATION

At night, I can watch the little firemen
through their station windows.
Far away, a man is like a painting
of a man. What do you think
it means, seeing things like this? It makes me
think I might never die,
but death is very, very likely. When my friend
died, I saw something leave
his body like a hand from a glove. I was crying
all the way home. No, it didn’t change
my life. It took me months
to learn that death doesn’t mean
anything. If you tell me it does,
I’ll kill you. Maybe there is such a thing
as romance after death.
Maybe romance is when I want
to climb into your casket
and hang curtains in your house
and tweeze a tick from your thigh. Then
again, there are worse things than Lyme Disease.
Eating nails or leaving your child behind
for home invaders, like in Home Alone 1, 2, or 3.
At least he had fun in those movies.
What’s wrong with you, Amelia? I can’t help
myself. You’ve seen those shows,
The Price is Right. You know how it goes—a woman
spins a big wheel and wins
a real rabbit. The rabbit is heavy, and so
she uses both arms. Never mind the care and
feeding it will need. I feel like I’ve won
the rabbit but can never put it down. And—
get this—it doesn’t mean anything.

SCENES WITH A BAT’S TINY RIBCAGE

at night bats
still look like bats
and I drive around
it is no longer summer
but the air is
the same in
my mid-sized sedan
days without rain
like on that show Alone
where the people are
alone
nobody believes you
when you say you
are alone
just join
the memory club
shiver in the woods
get a bloody nose
you’ll feel
like me
I shoot people
at the billiard hall
the heart just wants
what it wants
like a dog
shedding
on a deathbed