The Emperor

The gold thread holding
Leadership’s hammock
Is fraying like my personality.
I put my star-spangled mouth
On my husband’s face
with no aim.
His breath cascades over my
Neck.
Everyone on our street
has a laundry room but me
Our little girl wears old
Onesies and roller skates
in the shower.
The emperor has clothes.
He just doesn’t want us
to see them.
like a mathematician
he subtracts us one by one
where I go, my husband goes
his breath locked onto
my hips.

Less of You

The advertisement promised diligent bread.
The sort of thing that will eat for you

While you bask prideful in a fashionable,
Contemporary hunger.

The world loves you as it loves itself.

That’s why it wants less of you, Dear.
Of course.

Don’t doubt.
Pout.
There is a new job coming,
To be done by someone else.

Choices

Piquant wood shavings

build houses from one another.

Natural selection,

the choices of the man in the barn with his saw.

The light chooses not to touch those with old tongues any longer.

If I went to the light, I would find a locket of gold.

Choices are envious of boxes. To make a choice is to sew yourself to something that runs faster than you can.

When choices are all spooled out and the thread is cut, what remains is a saw and a veil of night.