I hear it in the static of phonographs
Crooning with the sultry sound of vinyl-scratched breath
I hear it in bassinets with mothball melodies that soothe stray cats to sleep
I hear it in the bursting bulbs of film noir street lamps and the rustling of newspapers in the street
I hear it when my feet are pressed to the hull and my lips are pursed to the sea, as the wind rushes past plaits of hair long undone
I hear it in worn-through pointe shoes when their ribbons are snipped
I hear it under orphanage awnings late at night and near buckets of washerwomen when they dump out the muck
I hear them around every corner and beneath every tree
Wrapping 'round every rope swing and whistling through every cigar
They echo like masts and arms and dolls hitting the seafloor, like things sleeping in train tunnels where only trains should be asleep

Isn't it lovely to walk upside-downs
And see all the smiles that were meant to be frowns?
Isn't it great to take yesses from nos,
To take roses from thorns,
To take closers from fros?

Isn't it lovely to breathe underwater,
To spend time in the cold and not freeze, but get hotter?
Isn't it swell to make fish out of plastic,
To hear waves out of thunder,
To hear nice from sarcastic?

Isn't it fun to never hear mocking,
To assume everything and not spend time just chalking?
Don't you just love seeing out of your ears,
To make pendants from teardrops,
Tiptoe around fears?

Isn't it great to never feel sad,
To never see pain, to never get mad?
Isn't it great to never have knew,
To live in the lovely,
To ignore the true?

The Plautius Mump lives under the floorboards of theatres
And feeds on applause and ill-fitting waistcoats
The Plautius Mump in our auditorium is named Frankus Dimitri and he is very upset if we don't serve up
A good smattering every week or so
He likes his rounds quite diverse and is terribly agitated if they are not perfectly so
Gloved hands in the back, but only satin gloves, and I like to poke him with pages from lost library books and tease
Because where are we going to get the funding to buy satin gloves just to feed our Plautius Mump
When Frankus Dimitri is upset everyone knows it because the stage begins to roll like a fiercely rollicky sea or butter across a hot biscuit
He likes when children giggle and may spit out coins or dropped popcorn from under the stairwell as a thank you after school matinees
We once attempted to put on an Oscar Wilde play and he became so anxious that all of our waistcoats disappeared under the stage

My depression is not poetic
I don't smash pearl-inlay vases given to me by distant mothers-in-law
I don't clean shards up on my hands and knees in housedresses while I hurry to put the chicken in and drink before Harry gets home
I throw childhood sippy cups full of molding tea at linoleum countertops and scream when they don't break
My pills do not come in perfect little white bottles and they do not belong on the top shelf of my medicine cabinet
I don't have the luxury of keeping my meds a dirty little secret
Every Tuesday of the month I sit in the passenger seat of our neon green kia soul and drive to Shaws and stand in the neon red wait line until I see a neon green go signal, and I pick up a little bottle of neon orange pills that shine brightly
Even inside a medicine cabinet
I have never tried to drown myself in the ocean on a cloudy afternoon
I don't like the ocean or afternoons, and I'm afraid of crabs

Engineered consent
Burn your bras, bitches!
Then buy our bras
Burn your bras and burn the patriarchy but buy our bras because our bras are rebellious
Cut out the underwire with a pair of pliers stolen from father's tool chest because we don't ask for permission but we also don't ask
For pliers of our own
Now that you've ripped out the underwire and the backbone of the patriarchy, buy our bras
Buy our free-range recycled bras, buy our bras that are stuffed with wool from disabled sheep that wouldn't be able to work otherwise
Ladies, stop apologizing! Stop saying "please" and start saying "now", stop curtsying and start cursing
Buy our damn bras now
The patriarchy wants you to wear push up bras to look good for boys
So wear sports bras to look bad for boys
But you don't deserve to feel ugly all day, and so what if you want to look good for boys?
So wear that push up bra
Wear our push up bra

This poem rhymes all of the times
Because I cannot talk well
This poem has a lot of
Pauses
AndjoltsandjumpsandsometimesBuMpS
Because I cannot walk well

Sometimes my writing shrieks and then the words
Rush down the isles
And sometimes my brain lags behind 
Each
Phrase
Travelling
Miles

Sometimes riting's rilly hard
And I mayke spellink errirs
But now words roil prolifically
Not liable for terrors

I put a little bit of me
Into every poem I write
And because I am tired
The last word is 
Goodnight

 

Loving you is like trying to float on eggshell rafts
When the adrenaline rush is over and I have to sweep up the vase
Vases
Loving you is very easy when I don't love myself but when I do
It's drinking water from a cactus
As prickers stick out of my thumbs
Loving you is that thing lactose intolerant people do because ice cream seems worth it before an hour passes
Loving you is baking oatmeal raisin cookies and then having to eat them so they don't go to waste
Because the raisins aren't chocolate
They aren't even close
Last week I ate three dozen oatmeal raisin cookies
And each bite reminded me of you

Calliope: Odysseus had followed Circe's instructions, knowing she was sworn not to hurt him. He sailed to the land of the dead, sacrificed a goat and heard of his life's prophecy. I tell all this to the bard, who is enjoying the gore of the story. I often forget how young men are so often enraptured by the smallest mention of blood. I know it is his tale to sing now, but I feel some ownership over the story. He's so fast to tell of the action, and not the relationships. He often forgoes the details of Penelope's clenched knuckles or Eumaeus's hunched back for description of the sharpness of a certain sword. But the next part of my story, I won't let him alter. Perhaps it's reminding me of my mother, Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory and artistic inspiration, but the bard is going to hear the tale of Anticlea of Ithaca or he won't hear the tale at all.
Odysseus: I know my prophecy. I must sail past the cows, kill the suitors, plant my well-planed oar. 

The back row of the old theater
Where the velvet chairs are mostly dust and the woodens arms are weary-wrought
Under carvings of trees that have lost all definition, carvings of eyes that I'll never see
Under lightbulbs that would welcome the hint of a flicker and old chandeleirs that have rusted alone
Where music cannot reach my heart and tutus cannot brush my eyes
Where anything and everything else has drifted off to sea