When I read Orwell's, "Shooting an Elephant"

He detached from his bones

—a song, severed. I repeated

his melody over and over

The pages fell.  I made

tea for his anger.  I read.

He was left by the stoop,

haunted by his father.  

I told him so.  I was a healer,

plugging in Christmas lights,

shooting elephants.  I cracked. 

“George Orwell was paper

needing ink.” I cracked

from the spine of the book.

Beautiful ligaments in summer

lilac, blurred and fragrant,
I cracked.  Please don’t end.  

Fix Me, America

I made my man howl in bed like Cosmo Girl instructed, except it was accidental. 

When I tried to run my hand through his hair, my thumbnail scratched his cornea.

I cried about it more than him.  At the time I was experimenting with false

eyelashes and my tears unhinged the glue to my plastic-eye-antenna. 

Those feelers slid off my eyelids and stuck to my cheeks. I was an alien insect

from a planet beyond the Milky Way.  I was Cosmo Girl’s girl from the cosmos.

There are things I could buy to correct my wrongs. 

I could make a new self out of acrylic, plastic, silicone,

and a splash of mystery chemicals—like Iron Man. 

Except my superpower would be my noteworthy ass. 

First, I’d buy padded butt enhancers, then creams

for saggy eyes and cellulite, a push-up bra, new nails

to cover my chipping ones, a few pairs of spanks,

diet pills (that I affectionately call brownie forgivers)

and red lipstick to enhance my tepid complexion. 

Or should I go with the coral lipstick instead?

In Walmart, among the toasters, I found the perfect woman for only

$5.99.  Her name is Lady Dish Brush™.  Google it!  You can flip her,

grip her leopard-print curves (for better functionality) and scrub

crusty bits with her bristle-hair.  She will smile the whole time.

Dirty

On Mondays I go to the hipsters

for guidance on being casual.

I watch their red lips.  I measure

 

their indifference with a ruler. 
My mother says I’m neurotic. 

I got it from her.  She never

 

strayed from her disinfectant

wipes.  When my frontal lobes 

fused I started to wash 

my hands until they cracked. 

It felt right.  Like the time

I looked at Cody White’s

 

Chemistry final to better

understand oxidation-

reduction reactions

 

or the time I met the 

married man, loved 

the married man.

I scrubbed my skin

with bleach to make

sure my hands would bleed.

Rip Van Winkle

There are always layers I forget when I sink 

into my invulnerable bones. I’m peeling white 

paint and my buttery heart next to the magnolia 

tree in the future city—in our New Republic.

The citronella candle blinked and my neighbor’s arms ticked against his sides. 

He was on his front porch in only boxer briefs.  It was midnight and I remembered

his wife’s arms—the time she scooped her wheezing pug to her chest. “It’s genetic!”

she snapped.  Electric colors shifted through their curtains. “She has a collapsed

trachea, Jon.”  I watched him from my own dark porch because his nakedness was

a big joke—funny like the word cauliflower.  He sat down, tucked his legs close to his

body, chin to knees, heaving shoulders folding and all at once I felt sticky, untied—

for him, for his wife, the collapse, collapsed trachea.  Or maybe for me.  But I  stopped 
myself, went inside, because middle-class sadness is a dishrag that can be washed over and over again.

white male growing pains: to my roommate's boyfriend

Thinking your girl 

will wash the pan 

you boiled your 

bratwurst in? 

Well, she hasn't.

Your ass-

umptions smell 

up my kitchen.

Little Animal

Pee here.  I’ll turn away.  I won’t look.  The black

raspberry patch, the patch by the tracks where he

smashes berries on my cheek.  Sit there.  It’s funny. 

I think it is funny.  Long I echo.  Beneath my toes

there’s tar from the bubbling road.  I’m fizzy.  I’m

Victorian scratching my hangnail, blood reaching

for black, black-rasping berries like curdled stomach

shredded open.  Never seen.  Never seen one before. 

A groundhog up-close, hit by the five o’ clock train.

It doesn’t hurt, stupid.  It is a little stupid, stupid

little animal, so near the tracks and all.  I hear you

all say it.  You’ll say it out loud, moralizing to decay.