– adapted from SJ Fowler
If you were a fruit,
what fruit would you be?
Black banana, fruit flies,
les ananas ne parlent pas,
(a little song of two children learning french on Canadian TV).
In middle school, the chair in the crypt.
The stack of cryptic poems high enough to use as a chair
& those who will never be sitting on it. Those who flower,
I flower you, you flower me golden, & Russian surrealism,
remember when I sledded into a tree in a yard without trees?
The black eye bloomed yellow. For the two who fold the chair
while your hair is wrapped in a towel; that counts as naked.
The talk, the Skype,
that neither of us remembers how to decline pooka
that was made of wood, & flowers.
And sea creatures, you only see the octopus
when I see the squid.
The diagnosis is a cup upside down a paradox.
That prozac in the hand held, not yet
sexual, but facing the wall with the fist
& not the street. Either fluoxetine is not treating this
or this is a side-effect. A paradox of sex, trust the bitch.
The two, like breasts, are two. Like kidneys, we need each other
and your head on my butt great & free, & outdoors
(you leave your boyfriend a note “do not forget to take her for a long walk”)
Part of The Learned Pig’s Wolf Crossing editorial season, spring/summer 2017.
Cover image: Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, illuminated manuscript (c.1412 – 1416). Detail from calendar scene, December. Photo: R.M.N. / R.-G. Ojéda
