To Do

(a love poem)

Rain on her to do list
became the tears of things
the rerum natura
of spent semesters
reborn as trimesters
and mouths of endless
bottomless spit and suck

look at the pretty
moo cow piggy duck

Today the asylum, tomorrow the slaughterhouse

First friend, then dinner,
first lub then dub,
she knows it all too well.



Past her lists of less, her trackless,
daily autumn, her
eat, walk, read, feed,
she points the baby-laden Honda,
toward Stephanie, Stephanie, Stephanie
and only on the AM does she find
whom she's leevin' an' whom she's lovin'

Vivaldi baldy

and hums the kids to sleep
in the back alley she means backseat
nothing counterclockwise ever happens
not horse not barn not dinner

but Stephanie !



so much depended upon
the elevator
stuck for two hours
between the white chickens

chickens number 12 and 14

first there was her speech
sweetly contrived
coyly dissembling
circuitous and circumlocutory and even
perambulating

and then there was

Stephanie, Stephanie, Stephanie !



yellow as a Post-It, smooth
as a Sharpie, swell as spit-up,
smirking

Iceburg lettuce, mother's milk,
celery stalks, baguettes --

cheesy, innit.