Attributions

— to JS, ED, MD, SY, OW, & TSE

Penelope pulls apart her father

-in-law’s funeral shroud 

faster than she weaves it. This is how I want 

to write stories, but 

years calcify into exhaustion, epigrams.

November weather, already petrified

by July. I put the preface to The Picture 

of Dorian Gray between my teeth & make it 

chewing gum to stick under the picnic table. 

Watermelon rinds

on a shifting plate.

Palatable irony. How would a cow thank me

for being vegetarian? Art is a predisposition 

towards poets who don’t write 

about how it’s a pity to love 

me & never say it quite right.

Oscar Wilde preaches

to admire useless things 

& never look over my shoulder. I used to  

be Orpheus. Faithless, limbs 

cobbled together,

overeducated, overdressed 

in black & white so I’m not mistaken 

for a gray area. Put the novelist in her place.

Mature poets steal. I owe 

the world more than picking at scabs.