(no subject)
This is a standard boy-meets-girl story. The magnets have reversed their poles on the refrigerator door. Still no food inside. The hard-boiled eggs have hatched and slipped away. Tomorrow I'll be sorry I ate your breadcrumbs. I steal to bed with a bag of them, and the rats are scratching at the walls again with restless claws. When I look for them, they stop. (How will I complete this book length poem?) Later, the red haired boy proposes that we pretend to be friends. We bond over pranks we could play on the neighbors. Waiting for prime time, I carry my ladder to the backyard, open its scissor legs in the tomato garden. I rise to it slowly in order to re-enact death. Look, the neighbors see me from their television windows. They see a ghost. The angel of egg-shell hair has landed here. Tell James Tate I am sorry that I'll have to miss the show. I have to finish my epic poem. I am convinced of its importance, though the English language is rapidly becoming antiquated as we speak. I'm hanging on to the image of roses, but I think it's been done before. We're all so sick of it. We wish there were no roses left. Pick up the receiver, tell your girlfriend sorry for me. Apologize for the roses, too. The phone only aspires to contain the drop in my voice. Area codes are memories. Like us, they never tire of losing what's lost. They keep losing them over and over again.