PEOPLE ONCE THOUGHT SHORTS FANCY
Back when everyone worked in factories
You could get away with wearing shorts
To a fancy French Restaurant. I’d call myself
An idiot in a past life. I’ll call myself
On the telephone in the future. The rapidity
Is dizzying, my breath is catching up.
My friends turn 29, then 80. I have a dream
About a camel. I can’t keep track of you
In your plastic undergarments. The scream
Is coming from inside the house I have made
Of my carcass, my torso & legs, my meat
Suit hovering in outer space. I’m a thief
If you are a lion, good grief tangled in dark
Cashmere. Casually, the planet grows warmer.
Neither of us panic as I button up my swim
Trunks in January. Who would’ve guessed
Any of this? I didn’t have faith I would turn
Into a good person, might as well have gone
Pumpkin. Plump is your reason, but so too
My loins. Bury your head wherever you’d like.
*
SELF-COLLECTED ANAL SWAB
Life is its own near-death experience.
Whenever time crackles, I remember the idiots
At Ford Motors who once asked the poet
Marianne Moore to name a car. A list
Of unusable beauty. My favorite is Utopian
Turtletop. I watch my beloved be forced
Into this position, then that. The nurse arrives
To tell a tale of making her way to this country.
It is long & camels are involved. My beloved drops
Her jeans & follows instructions, short & simple
& an anal swab is involved as you’d expect