My intolerable image is
faintly reflected into infinity
in a series of windows.
I consider growing my hair
into a curtain,
spending every day with
a paper bag over my head,
staying in my room
with the window shut
till I wither
like a houseplant denied light.
The hemlock produces no flowers
so I wonder to myself
if its needles poison
the soil beneath it
so it need not see the garish goldenrod
or chaste, white daisies.
I am scientifically minded
so I journey to the field to perform an experiment.
“Hemlock, do you think that
you are beautiful?” I ask.
It replies,
“I’m what they call tall, dark, and handsome.
A bad boy.”
I say, “God damn you hemlock,
I wanted you to say you were ugly
so I could feel better about myself!”
“Puny human,
I am decades older than you,
and will outlive you for many decades more.”
I kick rocks all the way home
to play my small part
in the cycle of erosion.
When I was nine years old,
I chipped my teeth and
refused to smile for a week.
Today I take my rusty scissors and
cut out a piece of my eyebrow
for no reason other than to hear
the dull slice.
I stand atop the hill where I live
and yell at the sky,
“Moon, do you ever envy
the trees’ long green branches?”
“What’s a tree?” asks the moon.
“All I know of Earth is green and blue
and all those men
who’ve stepped on my face.”
You see, I’m sick of being funny, I want to be hot!
I imagine myself
entering a frat basement
and all those boys throwing themselves
on the beer soaked floor
at my perfect, stilettoed feet,
only for me to say, “Sorry boys,
I’m celibate. Sex is just too easy
to come by these days.”
“Did you find yourself ugly
all brown and dried out
in the drought?”
I ask the grass, who replies,
“I found myself dead.”
In the morning,
I take off my glasses
and everyone turns into
finger-paint smudges.
I feel the smoothness of my teeth under my tongue
hear my stair-stomp footsteps
echo off the walls,
feel the round motion of
my hip in its socket.
At night my liver processes
all the sweet poison I’ve drunk
and my legs take me dancing
and everyone in this pulsating room
is glimmering with sweat
and I can no longer tell
whose arms are mine
in the beautiful, shifting
kaleidoscope.
