Poetry / Diana Rickard

 

my pen is a bug upside down

a jerky movement is a movement 

like all movement or gesture perhaps

I write of tin cans, I eat colors and they are so, so 

     marvelous

if someone tells you to grow up

place a dime on your knee and count backwards

     from one

it’s okay to be right all the time

there are deer in everyone’s headlights

no one’s wagon needs to be fixed

no one’s bed that they made needs to be lain in

a TV show is like a cigarette

is like a rodeo is like a chipped dish

is like you is like me and we all scream

it’s a miracle, it happens every day

when there is a lapse of snow melt on the

     windowsill

will your driver fall from grace

or your mosquito bury your nerves

I exhale a spray of carnations

and there are too many birds on my walls

when you go quack I listen

it’s like a bell in my chest, a book in the oven

a tooth burns through the whole night of belly

     embers

let’s praise our irritabilities, our inner shandes

let’s carry our rivals in our enigmatic half-smirk

     smile

it’s not too late to be late to the party

if someone tells you to do one thing

you can freeze up in fear

or you can do another thing

you can twirl like a hero in a stream 

streaming through a diamond colander

all your coolness a blinding shine

because you are the hero hot in the pink blue snow