[Untitled]
by Jennifer Burch
I joined the circus with a man in an orange jumpsuit.
I said I would save every letter, sail a million paper boats.
But instead I’m trying to imagine what was written,
how I gave everything up without being asked,
how one morning I found the galaxy in my mouth
and he asked if there was ever a time I didn’t take LSD.
I said I took extra to clean my scales that day.
He called me Dollface and I called him Circus.
He said, go tame the lions.
*
He sprayed himself down with Axe the last I saw him,
first in a cloud of smoke, then in the rain of a can.
I don’t need to meet you in Queens, OK, or anywhere
with a metal straw and blocks of ice the horse drew in.
We’ll never go to the batting cage.
They’re putting everyone to sleep below
and no one wants to go. No one wants to go.
Copyright © 2013 by Jennifer Burch.
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