Tell Me Everything
How are we starting this?
I think this is about a bone we share.
Tell me something not true
about where it came from.
God’s got a bone farm in Kansas City.
Every kind of bone you can imagine,
and he’s just tossing them out;
old bones, splintering down the ends,
wishbones you pull apart for your mother,
saucy bones asking you to slow dance
because it’s the very first time God’s witnessed
a birthday.
He’s been around for other celebrations
a Groundhogs Day or two. That time Mom won
$50 on that Stop ‘n’ Shop scratch off. But never
a birth, and you know what happens to a man
who’s never tasted birthday cake.
There is no man. Only cake.
And if you cut into a man, what would you find?
“Bones!”
you’d say, but you’d be wrong.
How could this cakeless man contain a spine?
How could this manless cake contain anything
but splinters?
I’m obsessed with cakeless men,
I want to walk through them and scream.
I have a cakeless man-shaped hole
in my bathroom, right above the mirror
in that strange, liminal stretch of wall
that’s too high to ever clean. I’m staring
at God with sauce-stained lips—
ready to ruin everything.
Let’s go back to Groundhogs Day.
What’s the moment you keep
having?
I like the thought of being able
to fix the things you fuck up.
But I think we’re missing the nuance here.
“Fixing” causes ripples. Creases even. Full tears, at worst.
And then
BOOM!
Creases in your mattress, in your forehead.
Tears up and down the Aladdin VHS
you used to watch with your sister.
Before you know it, you’re riding a magic carpet
on the way to literal hell; there’s no rubies,
no wishes, just linoleum floors, and a phone-
bill in collections
and "good bones."
Tell me something not true.
Not true: I am the same person I was 12 hours ago.
Not true: my mother loves my poems about her sleeping.
