The Trail is Half a Mile or Downtown Amity Island
Turtle birdsong a new way I take walks,
what’s noted now that we’re a town without
toilet paper. Four years lived Mississippian,
only this morning did I smell magnolia.
The nostalgia for an anthill, the covenant
between mail truck and magazine. How
do I not miss my classroom when the smell
is ink? Spring break kicked off with Jaws
and a sneezing cat on my lap the duration
it took a great white to nosh Robert Shaw.
Early Richard Dreyfuss roles were sixties
television: That Girl, Bewitched. No allowing
his hair to curl in oceanographer mode or alien-
encounter predicate. How many aqueduct poems
we’ll have now that people limit their outside
time to interstate-flavored air. Hear the semis,
imagine vitals riding: Charmin, Hefty,
celery. My spare moments won’t be
bowling alleys. Will I hear the sound
of moving men again? March 14th —
the submarine sandwich worker called
me Mr. Jon, extra chicken, double lettuce.
A removed condiment bottle, precaution
against social squeezing. On that walk
I wanted to groove my cuticle through
the turtle’s shell, but I calculated what it
would cost in soap. The tortoise borough
for which it was bound. Lockdown used
to mean how the elderly kept their cameos
fastened. Mayor of reptiles, what flashes
on your kiosk: salute to hundred year-
old claws or confirmed cases?
Non-Penetration and COVID-19
The peppermint-flavored tea dissolves,
anti-malingerer means one who does not
die or horoscopes that try a month without
alliteration. I was a corset-maker a few lives
back, whalebone in lieu of thumbscrew because
the thimble fit better on a Sagittarius. Optimal
distancing, what online matchmakers call
a good-market day. I resort to one-line singles
ad: Wants lover for non-penny ′ship. The fact
I have agoraphobia & OCD at a time where
intercourse v. indoorsing is not lost on me—
behaviors I’ve locked down cartwheeling
out of lockdown but I’m stoic as a potpie
or steakhouse of worship—takes a special
knife to know the difference between angus
& agnus, all that A-1 spread on stained glass.
The intellectual act is to romanticize the hunker,
think, this afternoon I read Tender Buttons,
tomorrow Jesus’ Son while everyone falls
in love with War and Peace & search-engine
steps for sanitizer. If I see a roach, my reaction’s
fuck it, the food’s canned. Groom or grovel,
it’s in the tuna-logo mermaid’s hands as to
my homebody hotness; mentalcourse,
the direction we’ve been moving
toward all along.
