Theodore
by Nicole Rago
Photogenically
brown hit me but didn’t cut into me.
I am “smudge” by T. Ernest
with his shaking handshake please take me
home. I understand it’s not for me, it’s for
the circumstance
but can’t stop it [hobble] can’t stop
kitsching on purpose . . . I have taken a nail file
to the numbers on the card . . .
. . . big smiling . . .
Do you know what I know
about having knitting needles for legs
in this collective dream? No, Theodore. Those are my bones
in the gravel powder out front a suburbia
Dairy Queen. I do, I do wish
to move and wash my guts out from under
the slippery rocks. You are living
downstream. The car-washing is TBC [to be
continued] those yellow
suds throwing off the pH make white
stuff come out of me, but I understand
I have left bruise fluid tinny
on the urethane . . . This won’t do.
Sponge-bath me, boar-bristle me,
hard-wax me. I want frictionless
pumping. Refinanced hair and dessert
before disaster. It’s not up to me but I can
say it if I want to . . . Wonder Bread, Wonder
Woman, wonder what’s
a’cookin . . . Without worrying, I will assure you
a hell made of claws and fangs,
Theodore, where tweezers are
pluckers and sheets are under-covers.