In my blood, I’d go to the men’s room,
the bathroom at Sears, she said.
If pigs had wings, she’d be a streetcar,
she said, and I would have been a bus.

I smile at the Midwestern women. If my aunt
had balls like them, or the pioneer women
crossing the plains, she’d be a bicycle. I would
have been a bus, and we would bottle Paris.

This counterfactual thinking. It is fruitless
to speculate about counterfactual situations.
She’d be my uncle, my aunt; she’d wash
her feet in the sink if we could bottle Paris

and make a ham and cheese sandwich
as respectable Sears matrons flutter
their hands, their support knee-highs,
her feet in the sink. But it is fruitless,

this counterfactual speculation. Fruitless,
my uncle, my aunt, even my grandmother,
though I suspect she has bottled Paris,
wagoned it all the way home.

NaPoWriMo, Day 27 prompt: Take a common expression, do a Google search for its first three words, then skim the first few pages that result, looking for interesting lines and images. I used “If my grandmother had wheels, she’d be a wagon,” which apparently, many people know from a Star Trek movie. The second result was, of all things, a poem by Mohja Kahf, some lines of which I’ve borrowed or adapted here.

That dress looks lovely on you.
If you don’t wear dresses, you really should.
Don’t trust the person to your immediate left.

You once cried when your favorite Super Ball fell down the storm drain.

Don’t pretend you’ve never cried.
We each have our portion of sorrow.

Think about your future.
Forget everything you ever knew.
No one gets out of here alive.

NaPoWriMo, Day 21 prompt: Write a poem in the form of fortune cookie messages, like this one.

O, bilious quahog!
O, my willowy owl.

You curl, an elusive
ghost, twice around

the miraculous cowbird
of my mercurial heart.

In seaweed, in salt, we squander,
we abscond with an afternoon.

We eat it whole, like a truffle.
It melts slowly, like a nonpareil.

I lied: My heart is no cowbird, not
miraculous. It is a dunderhead,

a generator of ego, a cyclops.
But it only has eye for you.

NaPoWriMo, Day 20 prompt: Write a poem using at least five from a list of certain words. I’m going to make you click to find out which ones, but I will tell you that I used 21 of them,

Hi there! I’m a loafer, but I can be a little sneaky, too.
Are you tired of sitting around in your drawers? Well,
I’m ready to come out of the closet. I’m brown, tanned,
but I don’t care what color you are. Are you soft and thick?
It doesn’t matter to me what you’re made of. Just want
someone to be with—let’s take a long walk, hit the town
and go dancing, or lie together someplace dark. I should
mention that I have a partner. If you do, too, that’s
even better. Let’s get on our feet and go places.

NaPoWriMo, Day 19 prompt: Write a personal ad.