Poem in Four Parts

More often than not I dislike this life. I listen to Paul Lansky too loud and the left side of my face begins to cave in. I lose 15 lbs then 20. I like the weight loss fine until someone mentions that I must only weigh 105; my face is sunk sinking below the surface of what skin can account for. In the construction of my body I delay cause and effect until one eclipses the other. I have no desire to go to New York. Sinking sunning I do the same work in grad school as not. I learn new words and wash them around. I walk out on the fire escape breathe out then in. Peaches on the back deck ripen.

*

I fake out my gym teacher. Grip the seat of the minivan until my dad comes home from work to pry me out or so he hopes. I have seen birds and other abnormalities. I know what it’s like indoors and I like it there. While I am at this, I will admit to other monstrosities as well. Eating soup off the back of a spoon. Eating my reluctance to earn anything other than an A. My life now coming back in heavy metal. Goldspun and fatal. Granite forms the topography of Maine.

*

In Gloucester, MA, a store called Hegemonic Computers. You think you know a word and then there it goes sneaking around with hardware and selling computers to the crazy rich and the Mexican kid who plays outside in the streets. If this were a movie, an open water sprinkler or fire hydrant would slick us down with city water; someone would sell ice cream bars out of a truck on wheels down the wet sidewalk. Watching TV, the first thing the program hosts do is soak the girls through.

*
Refusal of a key lime pie causes quite a stir. I have shrunk my need for sugar in the past. Dripping crystal hot I could offer you a patch of leg sliding off. I promise my tai chi teacher no more lack of rest. I slide this poem from my left wrist.