horns of a rabbit

stay in your pajamas until four. don't bathe, what use. let your hair wild like it might, like it will. smudge violet over yesterday's eye makeup. ready. zip your skirt on, it's the afternoon. tuck in, it's the least you can do. groceries, headlessly. eyes swimming over the list, hands skimming the articles on the shelves: eenie, meenie, you. stack milk, sugar, butter, and tea in the hammock of my left arm. last minute peppers waiting for the disgruntled girl at the check out. make her laugh by almost dropping everything. new girl at the café, she's not too attentive and her music isn't as nice. english man sits next to me and excuses himself in french every time he elbows me. i just smile and sigh into l'abeille et l'economist, half of which is going over my head. the only way to make me read economy is to relate it to bees and then have me meet the author. failed at making brownies, i'm usually good at this. not bad, not brownie either. half dried lava texture. lava loaf.

spent less time feeling low today, just felt instead. mourning over? i mourned you like you were fucking dead.


3 Men: Portraits Without the Human Figure

Hotel-casino: lights flash, crowds tread
patterned carpets hoping for a turn
in fortune. Despite the ardent wishes
of the women you have left you are not dead.
You’re good at lively passing things
that happen here: at restaurants, in bed,
at tables tossing dice and cards. That smudge
at bottom right stands in for me, as you plunge
breathless into chance as into women, risk
like drink obliterating everything.

Studio: smells of linseed oil and turpentine. Brushes,
palette knives, mixing-sticks; bottles, jars, tubes. Paint
in daubs and gobs and smears and dots and slashes.
You left the window open and everything stained.

Greenhouse. Beneath little panes pocked
by time and dotted with mold and lichen, rot,
a riot of tropical effulgence, small framed portion
of the endlessness. Spiky plants blossom
like ideas; light glances off the glass and gleams
on the permanent hunger, steams. Everything
blooms or is green. You shrug into your coat.

by Deena Linnett
studio portion, gift
end, faible