On Hold

by Elaine Equi

Sucking on the pacifier of my iced tall latte.           

                                   

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White butterflies: flying lint.

 

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My tattoo reads: Whatever you think I’m doing, I’m not doing it.

 

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Sticky self lugged around.

Poison monopoly mouse and trap.

 

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Okay, let’s meet at Duane Reade, but this time use my name.

 

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After years and years, it’s finally dawned on us.

Art is not an object, but a way of looking at an object.

 

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That’s a real Chucky painting.

 

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Only 39, 38, 37 more steps to the Holy Grail of Ice Cream.

 

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dog days

kerosene breeze

 

cartoonish faces

heckled by light

 

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My hair doesn’t do stringy. Frizzy, yes; stringy, no.

 

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tamales! tamales!

orchids! orchids!

 

torchids      ormales

 

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Are you feeling super imposed on?

 

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Three heads are better than two.

 

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Autumn Mutability

Drip-dry Rain

Net of Dust

 

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We’ve had this lack of conversation before.

 

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Please be patient. Prayers are being answered in the order in which

they were received.

(from Peaches and Bats 3)

Yearbook (10.4)

Box around everything about looking or being looked at. They scribble with oil pastels all over the pumpkin, then decide to paint over it with green, red, orange and purple poster paints until it is sublimely black. Too much sun and coffee. “A hand leafs through autumn with a logic that shines like oxblood.” And he glued the book shut and called it a sequel. A Comfort Fort. The limits of your language are the roofbeams of your house, and you can hear crows and rain outside.