i have this collar and up it
rises around my head like
a ruffle. i am a ruffle.
it is a fashion halo. i am fashion

ed. girlcore.
we pushes the dough into
a diva. washed-up i certainly am

not! i can hold my own
hem. up round my ears. there's
my frillies.

but don't shout about it.
sit with your skirt firm
over your knees. don't be needy,

learn about their passions. rage-

find out what makes them tick.
put on yr suspense belt.
keep it all tucked safe in yr
filofax.

be sistrly to yrself
and blood like cupcake mix
on your licky tissue
will follow.

you open your mouth into a yawp,
gaffer it up and hit yourself
with a tuning fork. grnnn

did your mother not?
you suckle on and tell us
the results. we are winning you say-
our team .

i turn sideways in the mirror to check
my belly. it's still there.
i think to myself i am a landslide,
bright as a butchers window .

your shock is a big dark dream-
words take you outward i have sin it.
sin it.

the position you occupy is one of
someplace.
you say poetry & i do.

where i am not
whittling you take the
pocket knife and pocket

it. deep in your warlock apron

twisting
on yr pitchfork.
i wouldn't put it

in the past you
held this walnut with
cc'd fingers

and cracked it til out came
fireworks
of tired trumpets.

we go upward on and in my
dreams you appear
entirely.

i hesitate to say that we
wouldn wouldn't would
i hesitate

too. say! we may be
two sides of the same
groin-

ze portcullis, la reine

i was born twisted up in vines & duppies
ker-ching

on martha brae's palm
white-ragged

and down her skirts
i slid into mud with bare bottomed feet

to my xamayca

a mountain, i think
you are one and your dark clouds
brown-uncurl big fat rain on me.

you are multi-amazing like a
monument
of molten orange spraying tigers
that spell
YOU.

i roll out the idea that laziness is the real
worst case devil i ever saw,
zealous with a cigar
sick-dripping smoke all
over my face.

that bit there is red in my eye and stings, i am
still incase it rolls cold upon my neck.

anyways, you're there and you tell me in your
manly clipped words about escape and
the future and that.

i gets it i think, i thought about it before when i saw you
rise from the bath like from scooby-doo, penis
waving and your hairy strange enormous
brain,
and the drip drip drip of the tap-

and i concluded that really i am
the woman is
not man does,
a wisp
what drifts.

you are my non-killing smooth handed robot. i open mine
and see maps. my hands are welted and if you
follow this line,
you'll see it leads all the way to jerusalem.