Election

Jinx is in the air like the smell of laundry.

I speak

Into a yellow receiver, everyone else is talking

As if to themselves.

A wraith turns & curses.  This may be the Bardo.

I may not be awake.

You may not be dead.

Perhaps I just got out of jail & you are on the line.

A Spanish girl with red-gold threads in her hair

Pockets her phone,

Spike-heels

To machine elves with metal arms, the poll.

Perhaps I’m the Spanish girl.  Perhaps you

(As dog) are late for work.

There is a hell

Nor am I out of it.  I vote later.

Perfection

I eat, don’t eat

Which breeds a predator’s alertness

Thin as a sheet

Of cigarette paper, harmless

As cream.

Starving

I pick salad from plastic, raisins out of the bun

Refusing (Using)

A tiny metal bowl in the company

Of others.    

   

I am heroine,

Gladiator in lion ring.  My mother,

Her cadaverous

(Fallen) hand, grace around a bone cup,

Does not scare me,

Her lips about to touch the skin of milk

Forever parted.