Animal

Can we all hatch and start 

from eggs? 

I live inside the After Hours 

one bedroom apartment. 

Pink mod walls and entirely sexy…

if you’re into little girl 

voices on adult women. 

My whiteness, 

my childlessness, 

or something political sounding, 

let’s me carry around a water bottle 

perpetually Care Bears theme. 

I’ll die in my own rainbow for certain.

The predators…I mean, the collectors 

will price it out all fairly, I’m sure.

My lover’s carcass buried firmly 

under the mattress and 

all the arranged bedding on top too.

I look up from the roadmap 

and wonder if this Fiona Apple 

tape will skip and cheap remix 

over every bump,

every hesitation 

leading to my breaking. 

No compliment matters much 

unless you promise me you will 

write it with sharpie on my forehead.

Only while I’m still sleeping…

He pretends to know.

I’m just another movie to learn. 

He pretends to see it.

Dissect, rearrange, recreate it. 

Because God’s a man, or something? 

I hang up abruptly 

because I can’t live through 

the sincerity of another goodbye. 

It leads to the folding and unfolding 

of Dickensian villainy and

required Disney perseverance. 

I sucked at it all in the first one. 

People can hatch without 

a morose divinity on their track 

to world destruction. 

Flawed is what I like best 

in my breakfast cereal, after all. 

But you need to promise me,

you’ll make the back of the box 

maze easy.