Found Object

Somebody left this white T-shirt

like a hangman’s hood on the new parking meter—

the magic marks upon its back say: I QUIT METH 4-EVER.

A declaration to the sky, whose angels all wear seagull wings

swooping over this street with its torn scratch tickets

and Big Gulp cups dropped by the curb.

Extra large, it has been customized

with a pocketknife or a canine tooth

to rough the armholes where my boobs wobble out

as I roam these rooms lit by twilight’s bulb,

feeling half like Bette Davis in a wheelchair

and half like that Hell’s Angels kingpin with the tracheotomy.

Dear reader, do you know that guy?

I didn’t think so. If only we could all watch the same TV.

But no doubt you have seen the gulls flying,

and also the sinister bulked-up crows

carrying white clouds of hotdog buns in their beaks:

you can promise them you’ll straighten up, but they are such big cynics.

I should have told you My lotto #’s 2-11-19-23-36

is what’s written in front, beside the silk screen

for Listerine Cool Mint PocketPaks™—

which means you can’t hijack my name;

no, you have to go find your own, like a Hopi brave.

You might have to sit in a sweat lodge until you pass out

or eat a weird vine and it will not be pleasant. Your pulse

goes staccato like a Teletype machine— then blam

you’ll be transformed into your post-larval being.

Maybe swallowtail, maybe moth: trust me, I know

because once I was a baby blue convertible

but now I’m this black hot rod painted with flames.

Source: Inseminating the Elephant (Copper Canyon Press, 2009)