Pacing around my house, laughing
and crying at the same time, this is
the closest I’ve ever achieved at doing
both together, it’s a Frankie sort of verb,
laughingcrying, and an ice cube is dripping
off my face and onto my sweatshirt and
leaving little puddles as I walk around and
O Caity Baptiste I need you now! This
is going to be a cyborg of a cold sore it’s
gonna be full-on one-sided Botox of the
lip it’s gonna stun all your med schoolies
into silenced awe it’s gonna make y’all
reassess your medical vocations, it’s won
the Golden Globe for Most Likely To Make
You Not Wanna Disrobe Me, it’s the best
and worst thing my body’s done all week,
it’s making me laugh then cry then repeat,
a crunching of the face where I get those
creases round the nose (the face Jen loves
to try to do) and then laughing looking
out the window as the dapper drug dealer
in his white fedora walks by with the dog
-owning homeless addicts and the ice is for
the lip because Lorelei Frantz (of the Blue
Camel Café, of ginger peach tea and my
employment) told me that’s how you burn
a coldsore away, you ice it out, you decide It
Is Not There, you chill it freeze it drip it all
around the house is what I’m doing, a messy
sort of process but somehow worth a poem,
Please come to the sideyard reading on Friday
at 7pm! and see for yourself the evidence! of
me attempting everything at once, of trying
to get everything right the first time around,
the proof is on my lip, it’s a mountainrange
of dripping sickness but wait it’s not so bad
in profile in fact it kind of makes me feel
voluptuous and I hey, NEVER feel voluptuous
you. are amazing !!!!
now i know how others feel when they get shout outs in the details!
get some of this: http://www.valleynaturals.com/swatches/50895_L_vvs_000.jpg (at henry’s? at whole foods?)
and also, just as i think of myself as 9 feet tall (people can only see 5 of them), you can think of yrself as voluptuous anytime you want – cold sore or no!