LoJack me love
LoJack me love.
It’s the only
way if I get
into a car,
drive to Ash Fork
change my name to
Jack Ford or Love,
just call me Love.
I’ll get a job
selling Hondas
Love’ll get you
a deal, I’ll smile
and they’ll buy it
pay more for Lo
Jack’ll get you
a deal, I’ll say
when you show up
in the cruiser
and say it ain’t
that easy and
I’ll tell you call
me Love and you’ll
say bull and use
my name and we’ll
get another
six months of Love
before I go
again.
Like a staple gun to the face
I love you so much I want to fasten our lips together with a pneumatic staple gun.
Something about the fastening would bring us together, not just hold us together—
the balloon-bursting sound of a three-quarter inch brad cutting through the flesh of
our lips,
the shared adversity.
And when we scream and curse and pull and cry ’cause two aren’t meant to
be one flesh,
I know we’ll tear and bleed and rip, but I’ll be tennoned fast to the mortise
of your mouth
just like that boxwood frame I built (whose parts, to this day, haven’t felt
the least betrayed
by one another).
And when we sweat-soaked pant on bloodied Berber just like two raw-fleshed lovers spent,
we’ll listen silent to the steady pumps flushing blood from our pair of open-mouth
wounds.
And you’ll hate me and I’ll hate you back but who cares when we lose consciousness
and
nothing’s left but flesh?
Taxidermy your neighbor’s pets and children
… next decide between conventional and
solution-based mounting (jarred or posed)
solution-based would make a lawn display
awkward it’s really meant for squid which can’t
be gutted with a scalpel or sharp knife
remove their skin when overcome with grief
and horror remember they were born in
an open grave remember too they are
immortal now better than you who I
notice is heavier but no smells like
old folks yet. mint? fine. dip the carcass in
Plaster of Paris to make a mold this
is typically when I remind people
not to cook the meat because they are sick
or dumb use next the fiberglass mold I
can make here for a fee sew the skin to
the mold, adding marble eyes and the teeth
can be removed with pliers finally
position the children joyously there
throwing a Frisbee to the family dog
and you’ve cheated God which is always a
tradeoff but what isn’t and there’ll be
less noise.
T. Hall
lived on
city road
look it
up he
was a
Curious Observer of Natural Phenomena
or at
least the
No. 1 Artist in Europe
toucans
he made
still live
and so
do his
lizards
I’m sitting when she calls so she doesn’t
have to say sit down when she says sit down
Isabella died who’s Isabella
her child I don’t offer to preserve it
that would be crass
impractical
jarred might work in
solution just
might be nice to
have
Maggie was gorgeous as Frances Stuart
who disfigured by smallpox
1669
was smokin’ hot before her parrot was
preserved wrong when she died in
1702
its skull trachea tongue are intact it
can’t speak for shit but who cares
when it still “survives”
Maggs thought
she was
pregnant
with me
by me
I mean
but she
was just
young and
frightened
like me
and that
was years
ago
when she
called my
Escort
Isabella
when it broke down
come on little
Isabella
coughing as the
timing belt skips
on route 3 and
she didn’t mean to
curse the name
incidentally, the car didn’t make it either
She married what’s-his-face Charles Stuart
Third
Duke of Richmond
married to a guy named Chuck or Bobby
or something that makes you think of townies
and jarred infants growing up to be jarred
toddlers three-hundred-and-seven-years-young
Chuck wanted to open a business
I told him look on city road he said
no such road I told him I’ve fucked his wife
not really but the thought reached my trachea
which is still intact
we’d talk about lawn ornaments when her
dad set them out front
I really hate those tacky things she’d say
all they do is look
stupid corpses I’d tell her would get some
attention you’re sick
she’d say and trachea-laugh tongue intact
as well as her skull
the hardest
part’s sitting
listening
to small kids
Frisbee chuck
next lawn over
back-and-forth
with their dumb
dog, she says
as I am
still sitting
when she calls
