with my unibrow

& elevated testosterone

& my strange obsession

My agent told me I would win a Grammy

if I wrote a spoken word poem, it would

be the easiest way to do it. You just write

Because I accept human fallibility

a man explains, voice like Telly Savalas

behind me. Voice of bald, of wide collar splayed, chain

With siren and flashes I was

trying to raise flames—

I couldn’t spread heat, flying isolated

and dead in this part of town.

Come on: I make more sense

than that bimbo with the part

down the middle. If the future

is run by machines, let them be

Post-doomsday & anti-

cowgirl, you are both raging

& repentant for the swollen levee

“If you win, you lose.

Add some butter.

I’ll either convince you

that you can be happy

I want to talk about the last time

crows talked to you from

the dying maple in the front yard.

Let's talk about new-old romance, the kind that only comes along

when your husband and your youngest son

are killed by sharks and you're just trying to get by as a widow,

a set of shoulderpads and a frothy perm,

You were the first

But you weren’t for real

In it Courtney Stodden spends a lot of time in skimpy outfits

Around some fading English people

The sun came out at night, and sang to me. Obviously. Isn’t that just like the cargo ships you find rusting in the desert these days. Those lonely characters we chase right off-screen.

Cut yourself and you'll get lockjaw,

our mothers warned. Scowl and your face

It’s unfair that I’ve projected my disposition onto the crabs of the earth.

My grandma fed me

things no proper mother would:

Tombstone pizza, Campbell’s soup, nachos,

cookies, and instant coffee.

When great slivers began to slough off the sun, Frog knew he’d have to break the news to Toad. Toad was in the house luxuriating in his breathing.

It's all relative. My father had a mustache, but not the rapier. My mother had a face, but not the cinch, not the selective lighting. Every cousin, a mop.

RESCUING BOBBY BRADY FROM A DISASTER MOVIE

The Towering Inferno (1974)