Feel Sick
Zoe Brezsny

 
I feel sick so I lie in bed
and look up Anna Nicole Smith

Did she or did she not
crawl into her son’s casket

crying, wearing a blue taffeta dress?

So I look up all the spiritual books
in my divorced dad’s
new apartment:

D.I.Y. Magic,

The Places that Scare You,

A Brief History of Everything

So I look up all the skater’s nicknames:

Mango, Scarecrow

Raggedy Anne

So I look up the opening scene of Ken Park

where the kid with the eyebrow ring

goes down on the married, suburban mom

The best poems are written by fourteen-year-old girls
because they’re writing only for themselves

From Weirde Sister
James Gendron

 
The male member is a malignant growth

Life-threatening to other people’s lives

But when detached it makes a lovely pet

As many as twenty or thirty can share a nest

Where they subsist on oats & corn

And all become best friends with each other

They climb into the people-bed at night

Where the area they apportion to themselves

Is comically out of proportion to their size

Sometimes I feed one a blueberry

And she carries it out of sight

I find it later that day in another room

They lay strange leathery eggs we give away

We wonder how to make them truly happy &

Whether signs of happiness we see in them

Are true, as when they stir & sleepily test

The dimensions of the morning with their songs