Together we’re a cloud spun by our own tugging
and all below appears florescent, a fat man’s vacation
shirts falling exactly the same past a dryer window.
I kept a notebook, got elected class historian.
Milk and noodles in the oven thickening.
My body moves me away. You said I knuckled under.
The coast waves a long farewell before breaking
apart in the aquamarine. Stupid as a bug in amber.
Don’t be shy of bathroom habits. Snow makes a bubble
for us to talk in and to fill up. Warm here in my body
and die a bit but not completely. No one on the other
walkie-talkie, handsets scream as they approach
their pair. Together we’re moving on to places
set with tableware not normally used at meals.
PLUS ONE MINUS ONE
I can’t explain infliction taking him
from me leaflets nail fences pulling faces
on another joke when one tab says my number
and one keeps ringing me up nada
that’s me my own girl for the smashing
pen and paperwork diminishes my breath
in the night I’m up to make a memo
take a photo for a bean-field billboard
not so grave when he’s the one who grinds
me up and down nah those jaws can’t do
me like I like nice young men who take
me down good for laughs and loaded stiff
who take my face and take a tab kitten
can’t make me not love the stroke I have
him and him’s my number now I guess
he didn’t get this far for anything
THE X-RAYS
At certain spectrums, I’m hardly any color at all.
Models storm the runway in rhinoceros heels
and their bodies thread tight through slick trombones.
When I look down, the place marked X is mine.
What lark it was to break each other, and wasn’t I
your best joke? A diagram of sex acts on the wall
makes us look like insects, all legs and hard bodies.
INTERROBANG
After we teleport our atoms I have questions
about exposure to electric fields. Scorpions
embedded in gourmet lollipops: threat
as treat, as aphrodisiac. Everything croaks
which is never and always news. After it’s over
lovers reconvene. Officers have cleared the scene.
Chances are I don’t know when I’m licked.
Sara Wainscott has recent work appearing or forthcoming in The Journal Petra, DIAGRAM, Unsplendid, Your Impossible Voice, The Account, and elsewhere. She co-curates Wit Rabbit, an inter-genre reading series in Chicago.