I sing of a coasting car, a trail of oil slipping across the pavement,
Of deciphering the graffiti on roadsigns
Of a ferris wheel in circles over the lights, the people.
I sing of triturating purple Softsoap bubbles
On Charlotte Saraille’s bathroom floor
Gout seeping through the tiles like an ink stain.
I sing of my grandmother’s houndstooth dress (100 percent wool, made in Sloat, New York), and I sing of piano keys
Separated into twos and threes, the chunks of curdled yogurt scraped from the dregs of the container
I sing of garden gnomes dressed in suits of peeling plaster paint, and I sing of the bag of grapes I packed to eat on the train to Elijay.
I sing of the hypertrophy of sesquipedalian palabrae
And I sing of the view out an airplane window- the realization that the world is, in fact, not so big at all.
I sing of the tip tap tip of typewriter buttons, and I sing of late, late nights, losing myself inside the owl eyes of the toile wallpaper.
I sing of the concept of love in theory (but certainly not in practice), and I sing of some nebulous little island, where thoughts could trickle out of my ears like a paper chain
And obliterate the need to be strapped down to trivial objects, those vultures.