Sent & scented with 10 emoticons
U R a “swan” inside my
afternoon.
Delirium is a trinket
cut in half.
2:50: river plaid state
2:51 gymnasium lily
In the bath tub
I wrote NOTES
about
yr fleece and yr math.
I wrote a Lincoln and baked
myself awake
I swam all summer,
indeterminately
(your) oblong
comets
thumb velvet
in an indentation
of purring.
2:53
Eleven dogs cried
the color of reptiles,
plus or minus the inside,
hurt in Leffe
a pattern
in a tablecloth repeats.
At 2:54 (some articles of loathing)
(the Teflon in a river *
of beer
U R November,
what) is a year
Black,
and a few
ellipses
) *)
in a summer powder
Copyright © 2024 by Tan Lin. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 4, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.
“The poem plays with abbreviated forms of address, employs time stamps, and mixes non-alphanumeric elements with alphanumeric characters to create something like a short-form text message whose non-alphanumeric characters look a little like emoticons in a love letter.”
—Tan Lin
Tan Lin
Tan Lin is the author of 7 Controlled Vocabularies and Obituary 2004. The Joy of Cooking (Wesleyan University Press, 2010).