Radiant Pregnant Spring in the Park
is bland with you
you make pizza taste like Eucharist wafers, the sun a mouthful of yellow dog-bile
children are ugly and shrill, with fat sticky little legs that rip at mommy’s throat
a kiss is an unsuccessful root-canal
drudging through a day with you
I turn pale, and it’s hard to believe anyone’s ever danced ballet
or made loud love, and moreover sir because through your yellow teeth
Kafka becomes a putz, St. Augustine a brainless sap
your techno-80s music takes a cheese grater to the smoke-white undersides of my breasts
your mundane Southern accent force-feeds me in a kind of reverse-vomit
I want
to Magic Erase™ your Mitch McConnell chicken-lips, expedite-ship you a new pair
paid in full, partly to help you, partly to help the chickens
but a handshake’s as good as a hug
I’d like to pull all the threads of your hideous clothes, crochet a noose with the leftovers
so I wouldn’t have to see your naked flesh, because you remind me
so much of myself and I don’t want anybody to know that
