KARYNA MCGLYNN
WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO WALK YOUR BABY?
I said to the couple on the airplane.
Don't worry; I won't drop him. I'm a dancer;
I never drop anything. Besides, I'm good with babies;
I
have huge breasts & big eyes.
He's just having a little altitude earache. I'll bounce him
on my huge breasts and sing something under my breath.
We'll just take a little stroll down the aisle;
let you two get some shut-eye.
Sure, it's narrow, but so am I.
I
have no hips to speak of.
Give me your baby, I said with my widening smile,
my enormous breasts, and my pointy pointy shoes.
+++
DUCK POND
My lover, one time, slid silently
into a duck pond and forgot to paddle.
He was Norwegian, sunburned drunk,
and he sat cross-legged at the bottom, though
the Canada Goose flapped and screamed:
Loki! Loki! You've nothing to prove to the Gods!
But water compounded dream
and he stayed under like a limestone frog.
His toes held weed in fine sprays.
Blackberries burped up and broke the surface.
Evening came and everything froze
the same color, the same gelatinous flame.
I think a wood stave stood up from the bed
and insinuated itself into his palm where he sat
watching silt clouds gallop like alpacas
across the green down gloom.
+++
MIDWEST STILL-LIFE
Through the closed door
you can hear two people boring each other.
A baby sounds like it's been stepped on.
Next to the bus stop, an eaten-out pumpkin
spills seed from its side.
Now you can get these boots which
turn girls' ankles into powder-blue fireplugs—
Huzzah!
One pair for the price of a hatchback.
These, too, have folding parts and good tread.
The word "quotidian"
is the graduate student's decoder ring,
a cross-cohort call-to-arms.
How can I please this rubbery republican dick?
Talk dirty in fleece, have some almonds
and cream sherry o yes cream sherry.
There was once a girl who grew
nervous bowels and turned into a bus bench.
Her breasts shriveled
and all the fizz went out of her
Pop!
She was always going: it's so flat here.
There was a man in her bed
who fucked her like an equation.
He wore a hat, had eyes like flat buttons;
his mouth was an inverted potato chip—
it said yes?
yes?