She walked down the hall in a revised step, I would say gait, but she was staring at cows and that seems a little too nosy. Like tom dick and harry asking for dates, each other, a wife and a home and kids, I mean the delicacy, have you got a date, I’d like one. And so she was married near a yellow chair and no one cared to say a few words about the wedding. Just a girl, a lady, and I’ve got news for you. What kind of Miami do you go for and is this the part where the groom sleeps in and we see her face a blank. She didn’t like the way she walked and so she switched it. I won’t sleep with things in the bed anymore.
It’s tempting to abstract it. It was under our feet all the time. Tight under the soil where the rats lay their nuts. When is a rat a dog. I wasn’t getting the mail anymore, wasn’t even checking. Sometimes you walk down the hill and it’s covered in nuts and oranges, blossoms and shells. Like a perfect diet. When we gather here together we gather in nut. The neighbors were popping over the fence, just a pop in to say hello and check on our carpets. There are ways to ask questions and then there are ways to dominate someone with question arks, to push them into little hills of ant sand with every q, for which there is no a.
You could say it and say it. You have all your little things. Here we are in our little things. I have a sliding door. I have two. My sidle is surrounded. Animals, nuts, people. Lonely is other people. Everyone is supposed to think about someone. How often do you account for else. An else. Let’s call her Elsa. If she is. If she even is.
You have to say how the other side won. You have to say Martians and Confederates. If you are really to be a scientist of the word you have to say it. Say I will not get too specific so as to let you in but specific enough so as to invite you in. Say it doesn’t matter what you say. Someone won’t believe you. Put on a jacket and try again.
Maybe if you covered up the collar. A little more on top. Try so as not to look like trying. Follow from the rare essential middle. Get yourself an exposed midriff and grow up a little. Every 5 year old needs to get with it. Get over it and yourself at the same time on the seesaw. I saw some bad ones in the sand once. Good baddies. The lots are full of them.
They take it a little far. I haven’t even considered you yet. I applied. You think I’m talking about it when I’m talking all around it. There in your little snow hut in the sun. There there in it. There was an audio file once of the audiophile in the wind. You couldn’t understand him for the blowing.
If you’re going to go synoptic make sure it’s short. Like a hem. Some cats are bigger than others. I have to make space on the bench for you and me and everyone we see. There is always more space if you could up. Layers. Pile on. Stuff stuff in. Riding high in the clown car of humanity. I have envisioned all the places so hard it burned my blue light through.
Metal roof. Vintage wallpapers. Days before the kitchen motto. A patch of grass leading to a meadow to a hillside frolicked through with straw flower. No one could describe the island better on top of it or inside. Two famous people come from there with red hair. If a cat don’t know he don’t know.
I can’t fake the word count. I take the examination for admission to the government body. I take it well. I take it for the one behind me. I take it for the next in line and next to her too. I decide only one person can take the tests for all people and we will all pore our scores over the water fountain. Women like myself. Trouble.
Some people don’t like authority. At the level of the letter. Changed it from inside the box. Came out a tin can. This thing I am teaching you is a waste of your talents I say. The thing is in the future. In the future there will be none of this. None of this reading and writing saying did she just say that. You’re not so special. Just in time.
Her gloves are off. Covered in pox. By the door in a small handmade satchel with a velvet string. The door slides off. She skips lunch. Picks her teeth with twigs and nails. Forms a basket of her hands. Covers up. Goes upside down. Thrashes lightly in thin air. Feels better.
Turning the thing over and over like a desert covered coin. There are certain places where things are better. Our passports don’t work there. It’s not that we’re trapped it’s that we’re fallen. The announcement came over the paper cup phone. Stay in your pod small ones the invisible airborne monster we told you would never come came. Don’t worry, it’s not in the closet. It’s in your mouth.
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Sandra Doller is the author of several books of poetry and poetry-adjacent things. Her newest book, Not Now Now, is forthcoming from Rescue Press. Doller is the founder of 1913 a journal of forms/1913 Press, where she remains l’éditrice-in-chief, publishing poetry, poetics, prose, and else by emerging and established writers. The recipient of various honors including the Paul Engle-James Michener Fellowship and the Anomalous Press Translation Prize, she lives in the U.S.—for now.