There is some genie
in our house, curdling poisonously.
I stay in the house
with a freckled old lady;
we're roommates,
unlucky enough to meet each other as life abated.
He does not live in the attic,
like a horny ghoul; or in some
rubbing bottle like an amnesiac.
But we call the spirit lady, because the genie is vicious.
She comes to the house and says we need to move
things
around.
Her eyes are circled by some creamy mascara
into these black, skin-tight, coon rings,
like absurdist sexual targets.
Things are moved,
the genie stays, gets more vicious.
The mongerer is blamed
for bad things:
broken pots, fights over rent,
piss on the toilet seat,
lost keys.
We call the spirit lady,
this time her fingers jingle with golden rings,
her wrists sing with wrought-iron rainbows,
and says rain will send that sucker running.
So, we build little smoke pits in our house,
and take the most important things:
bills, and alumni letters from my school,
and birthday cards for her,
and burn them until it rains.
The genie calls us falsifiers.
The spirit lady comes back,
a necklace of grimacing clams around her neck,
and knocks around dancing, dancing,
a frenzy, a wildness, a knee-knocking,
throat-throtlling, dismantingly,
limb-ecstasy,
until she poops out and,
breathing heavy,
saying finally:
"there is nothing I can do for you,
I don't think I ever could,
some things are just bad luck."
She turns,
walks away,
and one of her clams drops from her necklace,
it says made in America on the inner lip.
The genie left a few weeks later.