Poem where I mention Michigan because Bob Hicok is from Michigan and I am doing a reading with Bob Hicok, who is from Michigan, so it makes sense to read a poem where I mention Michigan, so Bob Hicok can hear it and feel something sway in the breeze above his nose
In Michigan, there’s a dispensary that doesn’t accept credit cards, but the employees wear name tags. I buy the left side of the dispensary because I want to go an hour without imagining my daughter ducking under a desk while the second amendment yawns. Who cares about sound when a lover touches you with an octopus’ second heart. I never look out the window mid poem and see a bird doing bird things, but I’ve watched poets gnaw their fingers off and mail them to literary journals. I pledge allegiance to the bottle rocket lodged my temporal lobe. My doctor’s started writing prescriptions for my prescriptions after I learned that your lips can get chapped from kissing for too long, and that even after a decade you’re sometimes still too pretty to touch in the daytime. Anyway, since we’re on the subject of pages of braille dipped in holy water and hung on a clothesline on a dairy farm in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, when you’re awake but not, I like to softy run the tip of my finger along your lips and answer questions you never asked: Yes, It is easy to love in the morning. Yes, I’ve forgotten the early haunts, or how the problem with life is that it is life. Yes, you still touch like a hymnal. I’m sorry, I don’t know what you should wear when every mirror calls you a ghost. Not really, I haven’t worried much about my penultimate orgasm in weeks but thank you so much for asking. Yes, maybe God made the dinosaurs or maybe the dinosaurs made God, but no, I did not know your thighs could set off the smoke alarm.
Sutures Is a Pretty Word to Hum; Or a Living Room Is; Or Every Held Breath Is a Missile Shot at the Moon
Wake up on the living room couch with your heart pried open, blood dripping down a hole in your chest. Your husband is standing in the doorway, staring at you like you’re a rollercoaster at an amusement park he’s too short to ride.
Look your husband in the eyes and say, I’m sorry you found me this way.
The problem is you’ve forgotten how to be a person. You try, though. You are always trying.
Tell him, Don’t worry, I can still pour a rum and Coke, and sometimes I even remember to add the Coke.
Smile like you’re the amusement park attendant who lets him ride the rollercoaster anyway.
Tell him, Don’t worry, when I close my eyes, you are still every Talking Heads’ lyric.
Tell him, Don’t worry, we are good even when we sometimes aren’t.
Tell him, Sometimes I accidentally put butter instead of cream cheese on my bagel, but it still tastes okay.
Staring, your husband is still staring. Pretend to hold your breath as you wait for him to say something. Imagine every held breath its own missile shot at the moon. Your husband doesn’t say anything. Be relieved that you are only pretending to hold your breath. Wonder if your husband has ever said anything in his entire life.
Wonder if people like trees because they grow up so slow.
Wonder if you were always supposed to be this way, waking up on a living room couch, your heart pried open, blood dripping down a hole in your chest, as your husband stands in the doorway, his mouth stitched shut.
Watch your husband grow a ghost in his lungs before floating through the living room and down the hall. Moments later he comes back with the first aid kit the two of you bought when you moved into the house. It hasn’t been touched in five years.
Your husband sets the first aid kit next to you on the couch. Last night, the weather was the moon, and the moon was swollen, he says. His voice is softer than you remember, though maybe that’s not true. Maybe it’s louder. Maybe it’s brand new. Maybe you’re dreaming.
I was outside, he says, dancing. He opens the first aid kit and removes a bottle of peroxide and package of gauze. And then there were wings sprouting out of my shoulder blades, and then I was just there, still outside, dancing in the middle of the street with wings.
Think, A living room is a weird name to call a room that holds a couch.
Say, Wings, and then nod. Say, Oh, there are wings. Imagine your husband lightly brushing his feathers over lips, down your neck, over the hole in your chest and then, finally, between your thighs.
Someone must water the flowers on the moon, your husband tells you. He says it like it was always a thing, that thing, the simplest thing—just a few drops of water and a light scent of bees. He leans over and kisses your forehead. He promises you this won’t hurt right before dipping the tips of his wings in peroxide and using them to wipe the blood dripping down your chest.