Rodeo in Reverse. Lindsey Alexander

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Rodeo in Reverse - Lindsey Alexander

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in which one furry projection drinks from the toilet, one projection sprouts leaves

      that fall annually and never improves

       at leaf-retention, and my husband—

      an invisible who may not exist in the kitchen behind me

      if it weren’t for his singing.

      Dog that won’t stop barking and all I can think:

      I don’t know anything about stars—

      not what they’re called or how they form, but how

      we turn stars into stickers to surprise

      our children and assure them You are better

       than normal children.

      On boat decks, sailors cry out Orion!

       and they see a man,

      but they’ve only drawn stick-figure self-portraits

      of fire and longing.

       I tried to sketch

      my face one night with stronger brow lines,

      higher cheekbones, but it was all nose, scaly

      water moccasin: a viper me.

      I paid someone who drew me in

      red with big hair, gaunter—

      the way he drew me made me

      see how lonely he thought I was. I rolled

      that portrait with wax paper and a rubber band,

       look at it during the Lenten season.

      That same spring or summer on the back of a boat, I caught a sunfish, baited him

      with gum. I didn’t like unhooking him—

      tore his lip. Astrologists

      shape stars into fish, take cracks at

      decoding futures. Palm-reading hocus-pocus:

      on my hand—which is starboard,

       port, and which is solar flare?

      I could use that hand to throw a tomahawk

      from this bed and hit neither boat nor star

      from way down here,

      so far from water.

      My sister was young and bicycling before

      she died last night

      in my dream. Dreams aren’t subtle,

      she’d said to prove a point.

       Dreams don’t fuck around.

      People in my dreams age backward—

      my sister’s breasts still smaller than mine,

      her legs still

      longer, but I stay

      my awake-age, always.

      The wreck petrified

      the witnesses—a woman and her child,

      who both looked like me, except

      they wouldn’t talk,

      wouldn’t show me

      the body. She had pedaled

      into the road, been hit,

      which the newspaper

      detailed in its color pointillism

      photos—my sister in chalk

      outline, my sister’s bicycle

      a commemorative art display in the future.

      An older man had found her, had called

      the too-late ambulance—

      I could feel her missing

      from me, and her missing felt like my face

      waterlogged

      to violet, so I woke.

      In a thunderstorm,

      in our double-bed years

      before, she once hushed

      me, Don’t worry,

      but oh how

      she kicked in her sleep.

      What if a person’s whole

      life were looking quietly

      out a window?

       That’s not a new idea, but whether it’s a sad story depends

       upon the view I reckon.

      What if outside the windows were the ancestors

      of your lover?

      Outside—a slow conveyer belt,

      a parade, a mugshot lineup, a reverse death

      march of the ones who made the one you love.

       Can covetousness break glass?

       Seep through the casement like a draft or

       a bad odor?

       How to thank—

      Do not think about the thoughts of the long-gone

      people on the other side

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