A favorite thing a chosen chemistry, electrically rarest,
crispest linens stark-on clothing line—imagine—
someone loves it, cuts it, reloves it, cuts it—even years or weeks or twenty-four hours
A dead mini-mart—smart, alone, unalone. It’s all Eternity, neon and blinking.
It was—better than butter, than losing it, than the piano, than our fabrics
—touching, those drinks,
loosening us up, to hear what dancing energy draped before us. Sitting on
—someone’s
city bicycles, laughing, before locking the mind up again and ignoring the
—inventive.
There under sunning—in green short and shirt, as if a pet snake. Saying to the
—eternal sadness: eat as many Dum-Dums as one likes. Eyes smarting,
eyes calling for as many Dum-Dums as snakes like to eat.
Refusing to think about snakes charms, this wild, gay asp peers at reality TV. It
—doesn’t matter
if the intellect is still or unstill, the snake refuses to discuss time warps as academic
—and studied.
These Lolls—the wraps peel off waxen, chipped, the wound the color of a brain.
Emily Shevenock has been a Roxbury Writers resident, received a Bennett Prize from the Academy of American Poets, and been nominated for Best of the Net in nonfiction. Her writing and art have appeared in Photoville New York, The Commonline Journal, Tiny Vices, Burn, The 2River View, Invisible City, Fatal Flaw, and Primavera. www.emilyshevenock.com
Photo by Rosemary Williams on Unsplash
