Thank Y'all for Appreciating My Animals

We know how she feels--her slanted
sidewalk, her white house, her
days of the week--and also
the way she walks talking, saying
nothing about n@sty exploit3d te3ns.
Her teens were actually twenties;
they were matter-of-factly male. Here comes Evangeline.
Might as well call her Dulcinea
she's so sweet, so unItalian, so right.
and we should bear it in mind,
the architecture--it's Spanish, not French.

We're talking about there's a place
on his chin that does that to me. The river
moves along hustled by riverbent light.
The slats in the bedroom let in
only enough to curve him like that,
you know? The river slops out of its sides
like a dream you shouldn't tell.
And his lips, too, do this funny thing
when we're. The river
mechanizes motion, liquid and solid
slapping in blocks and sliding columns,
like a tray of letters pushed
to the side. The river pretends
to be caressed by a breeze.

Did you see the black wings, I can't believe
you missed them. The teens shimmy
out of their shirts if you let them.
Let's call her Dulcinea, the sweet one,
the ladylove, who speaks for all of us.
His hair is darker in the morning,
like coffee without anything in it,
it's not even wet. She's the corrected
version of herself; she threw out the old
copies. She's the new chapter, the last
page, the back-flap doodle even. She's
the one we met on Monday night--
the woman, the man, the shepherd,
the goat-footed nanny of us.


[Commemorating this occasion in New Orleans. Forthcoming in Down Spooky, originally appeared in Skidrow Penthouse.]

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