After Meret Oppenheim

 

Steaming in gazelle,

espresso in a fur-lined teacup

clipped just less than an inch

scowling on the dresser.            She gullets

 

fuzzed brown innards

with a Levonelle

& a little salt                         (a day later)

 

three phone calls missed at five fifteen

with another due at seven

we’d been waylaid.                              The first shout:

 

“time is money, the early bird–” catches

 

her skirt on the subway,

tearing office snags out in gashes,

rat-race scars.                     This is what prayer feels like:

 

holding your breath all the way to the bank.

 

Last month’s move-in lies around

pulling tooth and nail for a long

low sweetness & each week

frank autobiographical exposures meet              another’s deadline.

 

Scissor spilt heels

incisive in stiff velvet

so red as to make

morning shriek                with the mutts outside yelling:

 

thank you oh good lord for not making me a man.

 

Beastly things don’t belong at teatime. ∎

 

Words by Eleanor Cousins Brown. Art by Sasha LaCômbe.