Somebody once told me that Canary Wharf looks exactly like downtown Toronto. Somebody told me that there was more chemical energy in a pizza than a stick of dynamite. Somebody also told me that my halls of residence was built from the plans of a Swedish women’s prison and that it’s legal to kill a Welshman in Chester.

I’m indebted to Somebody for this knowledge but I wish he or she could tell me where the shed key is.

Chi
(huahua)

Concise

as the mice’s you
dream track
through snow,

your sixteen nails on toes
press, in sleep,
into the thigh of me

“”
“”

“”

“”
.

Wake, chi,
and dance on pillows,

“” “”
“” “”

your tipsy feat
to balance

“”
“”

“”
“”
.

Once I get the courage
I’ll live on my own
In an apartment hidden by buildings
With no purpose or people
Look through the window
And see a jewel toned couch
Sitting next to old grandmothers’ lamps from a thrift store
Atop a patterned shag rug
Soft thriving plants
Will happily drown the walls
They won’t complain.
Cats named after favorite foods
Will be attacking the leaves
And walking through the door each day
I’ll know I’ll have to clean up the dirt
But I’ll never be mad
For I’ll finally have the courage
To be happy

I’ve always loved the word “Clouds”
The way you can get lost looking at clouds.
The way when you’re in an airplane and you sail through them like a pirate out on an adventure.
The way when we were little, we would think clouds taste like cotton candy,
And we could ride clouds like a magic carpet.
The way clouds are so whimsical and light as air.
The way clouds make you feel delightful.
The way clouds are clouds,
And clouds will always be clouds.

People are out again
clustered on street corners
and it’s almost shocking

I see two women in oversized sunglasses
smoking cigarettes over their half-eaten
kale salads

The lemon cream dusk illuminates
so many pastel-coloured houses
I wonder if the best years of my life
are receding before me just like that
yellow dusk
do you?
I’m not joking when I say it made me want
to weep

Fruits and sangria,
or the taste of a summer yet unspent

Clothes are stacked
in my room, as usual.

I watch them build for years
Then pull apart my teeth
like seams
Peel the Sellotape seal
from my lips,
Un-knit my tongue, explain,
Unfold pressed pain
Tug on hems, snagging
the arrogant cloth’s cross-stitch
Un-buckle my belt,
reveal the stomach-soft flesh curtailed,
embedded with stars.
Pull a needle through hems,
Force them loose
Crinkling the fabric in foiled faces, button-words pop
In ‘O’s’
from the blouse draped curtain of my mouth.

Until I’m hurled
Split material dispersed
with negligence
on a bedroom floor
They come in, turn-take picking me up, sewing me back
But I’m botched,
the colours don’t match.
Stitching askew, textile stained
No resemblance of how I was dressed in the first place.

I always say my summer plans are to rest,
To sleep away until I can ignore The ghosts of the images I keep using,

But the deer will keep showing up at my door no matter how many times I kill it.
Again it will be
My desperate hands in its chest,
Struggling to pull out an angry, hungry heart
With angry, hungry hands

Again I will eat its heart;
And again it will come to my door.

My summer plans are to rest.

Falling out
from gums red-raw:
A tooth, ripped from its core
leaves a gap

you can’t fill.
My tongue feels around,
spans the width of a blood pool that spills
on the lips we kiss with.

Words and people
are not hard to read
for the same reasons.
Yet, I look in the mirror
and
see a sentence
of a thousand words,
my freckles are commas,
my eyebrows dashes.
The set of my mouth
underlines all of this
in emphasis or anger:
unclear.
Words, unreadable
spill in tears
from my eyes.
My lashes are scribbled
in cursive.
Each clause of my face
has been moved around
too many times,
each word that sums it up
spoken too often aloud.
I have lost all meaning.
I am entirely incomprehensible.