1,550 Readings | 16 Ratings
Sweet Reader (There Is Much I Want to Accomplish Since My Month-Long David Lynch Film Marathon, So Kindly Pull Up a Chair),
Hold still while I taser you with a heraldic
dwarf in a ring of fire, or the aerial assault
of piss on a dry dirt road after a pot of coffee. Sit back
while I drill calm holes in your skull,
then buy you breakfast every day for seven years,
the two of us hunched in a booth at Bob’s Big Boy,
where you’ll have what I’m having—
a chocolate milkshake and four, five, six links
of sausage. You never leave a tip, reader. Do you prefer to stare
at the Formica like a lead-poisoned child?
Or, watch your shake thin in its incongruous
goblet while you cover the napkins with childhood phobias
in green ink? You, who invite me to cut
and filter and scramble your nighttime screams—
your balled hands a clump of Band-Aids in a health club shower;
the panther crouching in the brush of your
family photograph—until you wake up one morning
and plant the memory of your terrible grandmother
in a pot beside the kitchen sink, where she
sprouts and force-feeds you anchovies again.
The house is stuffed with plastic lampshades.
There are carnivorous fish blowing bubbles
in a tank. Throw your last twenty dollars
into a shopping mall fountain. Let your secret selves
embrace like brain-damaged boxers in the ring,
as we enter the chlorinated water together,
the coins of all your drowned wishes shifting
like oxidized treasure beneath our feet.
dwarf in a ring of fire, or the aerial assault
of piss on a dry dirt road after a pot of coffee. Sit back
while I drill calm holes in your skull,
then buy you breakfast every day for seven years,
the two of us hunched in a booth at Bob’s Big Boy,
where you’ll have what I’m having—
a chocolate milkshake and four, five, six links
of sausage. You never leave a tip, reader. Do you prefer to stare
at the Formica like a lead-poisoned child?
Or, watch your shake thin in its incongruous
goblet while you cover the napkins with childhood phobias
in green ink? You, who invite me to cut
and filter and scramble your nighttime screams—
your balled hands a clump of Band-Aids in a health club shower;
the panther crouching in the brush of your
family photograph—until you wake up one morning
and plant the memory of your terrible grandmother
in a pot beside the kitchen sink, where she
sprouts and force-feeds you anchovies again.
The house is stuffed with plastic lampshades.
There are carnivorous fish blowing bubbles
in a tank. Throw your last twenty dollars
into a shopping mall fountain. Let your secret selves
embrace like brain-damaged boxers in the ring,
as we enter the chlorinated water together,
the coins of all your drowned wishes shifting
like oxidized treasure beneath our feet.
Posted 03/17/09
