Jenny Drai

[ YOU AND I ] / [ THE BALLAD OF ROLLO AND EINAR ]

Light shines from a peach and that is pure sugar

            light.

Everyone in the office today forgets to wear pants.

Because pants are ‘unnecessary.’

My resume is abysmal and full of gaping holes.

Illness is a fucking maw / make a peach out of your

            distances / your mistakes / your entire

atrocious life.

Quickly you remind me to remain positive.

Fuck fuck fuck I yell into a paper bag because I want to be

            heard.

My temperament tells me I was most likely

            a notable Viking in a past life.

 Because I like to travel and fuck shit up.

Please pardon my descent into ‘French.’

Like those Normans, descended from Rollo, he himself

            a noteworthy Viking.

A-Viking we shall go-go.

I need farmland.  There’s no farmland here in the

            stuffy office of no pants.

Please find some goddamned pants and leave me in peace

because I really need to eat this peach.

Need to feel sugar in my throat / some life-held

            sweetness.

Like, right now. 

The Vikings were travelers and marauders but also

            able farmers.  They knew the stink

of dairy cows and sheep.

Counting milking stalls at the archaeological

            site / watch me dig.

You’re still here / you place a finger in one gap.

This is how you discover my medieval age.

Don’t call it ‘dark’ you say / call instead your caverns

            kernel / ovule.  Meanwhile,

Einar Olofson, a less

notable Viking, warms his

chilly hands in the hay barn of the settlement.

All of the Vikings wear pants.

The pants are spun of love and wool.

Remember, you tell me, nobody was born wearing

            pants.