Put on your bedroom suit
and get on over here
with your two hips and your

hair

I’m not too tired to dance with you yet

I got new teeth, and they sang to me
like a picket fence full of birds.
I got new teeth when I signed up for old teeth.
My new teeth were not made of metal,
bone, or hide. They didn’t belong to me.
My new teeth spoke to me by clicking together.
I don’t remember what they said,
but I bet it was something good.

You have to stay in the same burrito we put you in.
You can’t fly angels up to the sky or catch anything
in a net that’s made of stars and holes. Don’t catch
the next boat. You’ll only suffer out there,
bumping along some honeycomb coast of a
godforsaken guano island atoll until the boat
splits apart, casts you out to be eaten by seals. Seals!
The betrayal, after how you cried at the cartoon
where they got clubbed and the ice went red.
You have to stay here until you no longer want to leave
and no longer have the right clothes, anyway–
for some people, that’s actually a very short time.

Let’s raffle off some business cookies,
a certain little dream house of the mind.
Cow spots and flying toasters everywhere,
like a ’90s computer, back when everything
was simple and the color of putty. Remember
those flesh-colored days (well, certain flesh)?
Let’s raffle it off, the continuing stream
of trout, a certain train that only stops
at certain stations where there are no seeds
of any kind, and nothing to be forgiven.
Let’s all wear blankets. Let’s all count mice
as if they were people, and ourselves
as if we were flesh-colored mice.

Dear ____ [Redacted],

I have your cookies,
and have had them for some time now.
I can’t bring them to you because of sadness
and because I’m collecting ways to fail,
hoarding them because they’re comfortable
out in the open like that. Your cookies, though,
are in our basement storage. Out of sight, out of mind
except that every day, I think about going down there,
and then I remember that I’m a terrible person,
completely the sort who hides cookies
while singing mourning songs
and waiting for rats–I hear they’ve been sighted
right there in basement storage, and I’m sure
they like Thin Mints as much as anyone else.
I might just eat your cookies, actually,
to stave off rats and because
if I’m going to be a horrible person,
I may as well be one that contains
your four boxes of Trefoils.

But never forget that you’re always still
a failure; the truth could happen at any time
as you reveal your tarnish, as everything becomes
rootless. Don’t forget failure. It rides in your back,
low, the spot that could always discredit you,
belittle you and cripple you, if we’re really using
words. This is not about positivity. This one
will not take a sudden turn toward grace;
it stays ugly, no matter how I try.

But the whole entire time,
he was looking in my eyes
one by one–which took a long time
because I am a spider.
I do spider things, you know,
and these are my fangs.
But anyway, you know how sometimes
a morning looks at you, and you feel,
somehow, acknowledged? And then
everything you weave for the rest of that day
is stronger, more catching, and you can
carry on your spider business for a long time,
just from that one drop of water.

She’s selling shit that she got as gifts.
I think I have lipstick on my teeth.
The sky pours out like orange juice,
pulp free, plus calcium and vitamin D.
We’re all a little depleted and pale,
a little bit like crusted salt-snow
between dogs’ toes or the hems
of dirty jeans, all prone to
faux pas, little gaffes,
February bruises.

Every character dies.
Some just die more horribly than others.
The little girl unzips
like a slug
to reveal a pair of orchids.
The old lady stubs her toe
on everything she ever achieved
or knew,
pirouettes over her unmade bed,
and breaks her neck.
The bad, bad man–
not just comically bad
or rakishly bad, but actually bad bad–
goes quietly in his sleep
because no one every said anything
about justice, or meaning, or beauty.
I have assigned some beauty to the little girl
because I am not insensate,
a mollusk incapable of pearls.

Maybe I can enable you to live
your wildest dream potential
in a forest of mushrooms
inside your own body.
You’ll never want to leave
once you’re safely tucked into
your armpit, there to rest, there to
catch the scent on every breeze,
to flehmen like the best kind of cat.
You’ll never know what hit you when
the pounds and inches melt away
and the money starts rolling in;
soon, you’ll be a tiny rich person,
a small butter cookie version
of your former fat self.