For the days when your ego slaps itself as if it’s playing hambone,
remember: there’s a name for the smell of rain on pavement.

And every photograph is like Stockholm Syndrome,
where subjects fall in love with their captors.
You are no victim. That’s why I still don’t know whether you’re photogenic.
All I ask is that you keep photographing my self-portraits,
so that I may love you through the way I view myself.

Because my ego is more like that potato clock from the science fair:
surprisingly electric, yet full of holes. My skin is pierced with nails,
but I am no Christ. It’s just my job to keep time.

That’s why first place goes to the skateboarding rat.
The judges don’t like me because I don’t believe in gimmicks.
But when you look at me--alligator clips and all--
your eyes become blue ribbons, letting me know
that I have won and you intend to claim your prize.

“Let’s take a photo,” I say.
You say no, that taking pictures will make us like everyone else.
I ask why it matters if we know we’re not.
You look down at the newspaper. In my mind, I say your name.
And when you look up from the politics section,
I snap a photo for good measure.

This plan seems completely doable until I realize
I’ve never called you by your name.
You call me by mine, and attach it to sayings like
“No one will ever bring half a smile to my face like you do”
or “Hi” or  “How are you?” or “I love you.”

Is this because there’s only me or because
there’ve been others besides me?

If I were to succeed in capturing you,
I imagine you’d have red eyes in the photo.
Red ribbons to let me know I’ll never top second place,
that there are other girls you’ve been inside of,
but you are my only. No contest.

And yet you ask if I’ve awarded any other blue ribbons.
You don’t believe me when I say, “No.”

I know you asked as a way to boost your ego,
but for the days when your ego slaps itself as if it’s playing hambone,
remember: there’s a name for the smell of rain on pavement,

and that your wish to feel special should never be at my expense.

Just because I’m reclusive, doesn’t mean I don’t love you. Above you stand only second-hand crossword puzzles chucked by gods, their errors in ink. The newsprint covers your head and you fill in some blank squares to make words shorter, how you want them to be. If you had your way, you’d be a philosophy major. You’d submerge yourself in knowledge like a child who spiraled from heaven via twirly slide in a pit of plastic *****. Your way would lead to fortune cookies filled with morbid maxims and hand-picked lucky numbers because computers are so impersonal. You’d call the absence of ignorance death; but until then, bathroom wall banter must do. **** what goes on in bathroom stalls. I touch myself in a public restroom thinking of you, my eagerness a shaken bottle of ginger ale. Two hours later, they start peering in the stall, asking if I’m alright in there. I feel the way I did when Jessica Serber ripped out my braid in second grade when we were playing Marco Polo. I told Coach Fish and she asked, “What am I supposed to do? Glue it back on?” I hated her ever since. And yet it’s not just hatred, but also fear, like the fear of killing spiders in case their family chooses to avenge them. I can never get over it; I can never live it down. So forgive me for never telling you this. Forgive me for never telling you much of anything. Just because I’m reclusive, doesn’t mean I don’t love you. But if one day you decide to leave me, I’ll hire a hustler who looks just like you.

My Lucifer, unwitting Muse, dog-eared Vonnegut,
          afrobeatnik third eye, howls escaping
from your headphones, wailing about secrets, about infidelity,
          about analyzing life until there ain’t nothin’
left. Then you shuffle by in your black and white Adidas,
          hair in twists, wearing the striped sweater
of nihilistic intent, quoting the rants of Holden Caulfield
          in your blog like you never didn’t know him.
I never asked to know you, to want who I can’t have
          when I can’t even love myself. And every fiber
Of my being yearns for reciprocation. What is there
          to return? What is there to feel, you meditate on truth,
fallen angel in the parlor of rebellion, blasphemous goodbye,
          bright and morning star simpering like crickets in the palms
of daybreak. Your musicality radiates from subway chatter
          and overheard profanity down El Camino Real.
I take in your ballad at my post office mailbox,
          in the abandoned echoes of daydream monologues.
You’re a philosopher, exploring theory of mind, a cartographer,
          mapping the labyrinth of your deepest desires.
Tell me again about desires, demonstrations of divine sadism. Tell me
          about human empathy, the animated faces of wordless expression,
the metaphysics of free will, my beginning and my end,
          alpha and omega, my fortress in the land of chic.
Blasphemous hustler, let your idealism simmer, your wit, your mojo,
I come to you an amateur, a neophyte, a lowly scab
in the strike against ignorance. Give me my melody, my song,
          my one-hit-wonder of all that is cliché and unknown.
But I can’t be the other woman, your girlfriend, your aspiring
          ******* bunny only 10-bucks-a-throw. Your highness-who-yells-
his-ideas-into-the-ears-of-echoes, your every quirk spellbinds me.
          Each day I wake to your entourage vibrato.
I am held captive by your brooding stare, empress of liberal
          doves. You visit in my dreams when the sky is a force of darkness
viewing light through peepholes, your flaws an aphrodisiac, a love drug,
          a fast hit in the basement from the ecstasy of words.

There’s something about the post-punk silence of nighttime that makes me doubt my soul. That makes me define things in terms of what they follow instead of what they are. Someday, I hope my life will be as interesting as a rock-and-roll portrayal of history. Something to be envied. Something to be admired for its brilliant art direction and cinematography, but panned for its lackluster script. In simpler terms, something boring but pretty. But I’ll only be in it for the costumes. And the one critic who will understand and say, “Her story is strange. At night she levitates above her bed. She’s over the age of sixteen, but she’s still not a witch yet. Kudos for not succumbing to clichés.”

She—an unrepeated motif—waxes precocious like her ancient self.
Never mind the counterfeit eccentrics,
strange enough to be noticed but not doomed.
Their only burden is imperfection.
She’d die for these people, but they don’t realize omniscience is boring.
In preschool, she learned people are mean for no reason.
There’s no sense in spiting the inevitable,
so she gave away her quarters at bake sale.
Her mother would say, “That money is yours.”
The girl would ask, adjusting her overalls,
“If it’s mine, can’t I decide what to do with it?”
In the future, when repeating this story to a potential motif,
she’d know he’s The One when he’d say,
“What do four-year-olds need to know about capitalism?
Thanks to Walt Disney, they want to conform
and follow their hearts at the same time.”
She’d get off on his grumpy, and then notice his ring.
If he had met her first, would he still have married his wife?
It’s not worth hoping for divorce. He’s built to mate for life.
Instead of turning twenty-six, she’ll choose a chair in purgatory—
trapped between what should be and what is.
As long as she’s sitting, she may as well start smoking.
It’s a fine day for oral fixation.
At least she doesn’t smoke Parliaments like the counterfeit eccentrics.
She’d wonder if in a past life she was a dusty vacuum cleaner,
covered in what she was meant to destroy.
It’s too easy to claim hypocrisy,
too easy to cry genius for discovering what works
when for so long, failure was the only place to go.
She hasn’t been happy since she was thirteen.
The day before her first existential crisis,
her mother said, “Stop being so melodramatic.
You must want to be depressed.” Her response:
“I’m not too young for a mid-life crisis. I just won’t live to see thirty.”
She owes her life to a fear of hell,
knows we all experience hell differently. Hers is a banquet.
The proceeds will go toward ending world hunger.
At the end of the night, the keynote speaker complains
that Alfredo sauce doesn’t reheat well, so the leftovers get thrown out.

I.

On the blue bridge behind the honey slide,
a little girl dreams of see-through lingerie.
She wants to surprise her husband with her *****,
to greet him at the door after his long day at work.

When her friends exile her from the playground,
she runs home to pan the television static for *******.
When the red numbers skip ahead,
she runs to the bookshelf for the medical dictionary.

II.

“There’s something about Sunday night
that makes you want to **** yourself.”
When she said this, her homework was finished,
and there was no God.

III.

If pride comes before “The Fall,”
I wish it would get off quickly.
I’m waiting for the stunt man to trick
the bushy-browed girl into stealing morphine pills.
Everything he stands for lies on the cutting room floor.
No one had the guts to tell him.

IV.

Once you think to sell the free books
out on the table, only Word Perfect 8 for Dummies
is left. You’re doing it wrong.

V.

She lays face down on the carpet.
Her scalp burns from the pulling. She can’t breathe.
If only she could make them turn around
in time for the blood, but they don’t come when called.

VI.

You were at the right place at the right time.
It could have been me. It should have been me.

VII.

When the deli forgets your chocolate cheesecake,
you’ll ask if it’s because you’re black.
You claim you’ll eat the cookie they sent by mistake,
but you knew it was coming.
There was no mistake.
Take a look at the receipt.

I.
All I know exists between clenched fists.
My hands didn’t come this way.
Everything foreign rubs them raw,
no matter how gentle.
This is how my body looks out for me.

There used to be sand here.
I held on so tight, I lost it.
Now, the sand dwells with two-way mirrors
and fish who need fresh air.

II.
Most days, I’m best left alone.
The handy-woman loosens my screws,
and thinks she’s always right.

On the days I’m a fish out of water,
she sees me as a crying baby.

She must be hungry, and the airplane comes again.
She’s still crying, and the airplane comes again.
I am not enough, and the airplane comes again.

When my belly swells,
she paints a barcode on my arm,
tries to exchange me for store credit.

III.
All that matters escapes me.
I’ve learned more from the vandals
shooting blow darts at the moon
than I ever did out west.

Most days, I doubt that I’m still breathing.
My lungs are worms’ meat.
My lungs don’t know if they need water or air.
Thank God for shallow ends and seltzer.

IV.
These IOUs are legs
my brain can’t recognize.
I clamp them at the knees;
I pray for gangrene.

When the doctors drain the infection,
they say, this can’t be what you want.

This is how I look out for my body.
I’m still searching for a saw.

The first time your mother ever hit you, you realized she has hands. You knew all along that she had them, and that they would grow cold. (You used to tease her for wearing gloves in fifty-degree weather.) Yet, it wasn’t until that moment when you felt them.

Every memory you have of your mother’s hands involves watching them. How she’d oil her cuticles before pulling on her cleaning gloves. The way she dangled her one wrist, like a praying mantis at rest, with her other hand on her hip. When this happened, you loved how her gold bangle rattled. She never took it off.

After she hit you, she told you not to call for help, or there’d be consequences. She gulped down more of the drink you had been sharing. She left the rest for you. It’s a shame you don’t like cola.

If a wrecking ball fell through the ceiling right now, I wouldn’t run.
I’d relish the scramble, apt as a totem pole amidst a school of fish.
If you don’t want to get hurt, just go around me.
You should know by now I’m always in the way.

If I were a totem pole amidst a school of fish,
I’d hope to be crushed at the center of a dance floor.
You should know by now I’m always in the way.
Disaster only strikes when we write it off.

I hope to be crushed at the center of the dance floor.
The ones who never knew me would reuse my obituary.
They’d know not to write off disaster.
They’d wrap their dishes in the newsprint when they moved uptown.

The ones who never knew me will reuse my obituary
for the thousands of others just like me.
They’ll wrap their dishes in newsprint when they move uptown.
They never pray for wrecking ***** to crash through ceilings.

The thousands of others like me
never knew that expecting the worst could save lives.
I always pray for wrecking ***** to crash through ceilings,
but this is not the answer.

Expecting the worst only saves lives
if your death is a surprise party that never happens.
This is not the answer.
You cannot think like this every day.

If your death is a surprise party that never happens,
you will stop believing that it is possible.
You cannot think like this every day.
Your fear will become the moans of a woman who’s not wet.

You will stop believing that what you want is possible.
If a wrecking ball falls through the ceiling right now, I won’t run.
I will moan through the fear even though I am not wet.
Just go around me if you don’t want to get hurt.