My gut, behind my maroon T-shirt
with scum spelt on it, is full of bad Chianti
& key lime pie. My head, whose face sports
a pink & Carolina blue princess mask,
is full of the bad Chianti’s effect & baseball
stats. My room is full of medicine bottles of iron
& posters of Veronica Lake & Barbara Streisand.
My itch cream is full of goop. My eyes, which
in this runt-month sun (off the snow blaring
through the window) light are as green as a
Granny Smith, fixate, behind my pink & Carolina
blue princess mask, full of blinking looks
at a girl who sits on my bed full of decision.
My bathroom is full of all the fixins'
of a bathroom: Head & Shoulders, the loofah,
the Jimmy Hoffa towels & cum stain’d rags,
the shower curtain action-painted
with black mold. & now that I think about it,
there’s a sort of Russian Doll situation at play,
‘cuz the toilet in the bathroom is full of
flushes, the faucets full of the X City water
supply, the under-the-sink full of itch cream,
which is itself full of goop, & the medicine
cabinet with Polaroids of my days in the cabaret
scene. I had one of those, a Russian doll, when
I was a dziecko in Krakow & I’d drop my toy
orange parachuter anywhere a toy orange
parachuter could drop. You could say
that Krakow was full of me & my toy orange
parachuter & Poland of Krakow & Europe
of Poland & the world of Europe. The Hohner
F harmonica I’m holding in my maroon
scum T-shirt & the pink & Carolina blue princess
mask is full of a noise I can blow out,
& the girl on my bed full of decision-making
is put off by the Veronica Lake & Barbara
Streisand posters my room is full of. I’m dizzy,
I pop a capsule full of iron & turn on the faucet
of baseball stats, trying to rid my head of fullness.
I was walking around Blue Town, a town where everything is blue: the houses, the skyscrapers, the arcades, the gas station & gas station pumps, the ice rinks, the gravestones, the roads, even the median lines in the roads (which is confusing); luckily, I don't drive. I was walking with Josie Boddle, my ex-common law wife, who had lately taken to affecting a limp & walking with a floral print cane. I was trying not to say anything, as we'd previously gotten into momentous arguments over her seemingly bi-monthly affectations: first it was a Southern twang. Eventually, she told everyone she grew up in the circus . . . I was taking PTO from my job as the Grand Poet / Dolphin Researcher of Red Town,
a town where everything is red.
You could say I was trying to put my life back together. I'd just gotten in a friendship-ending argument with my best friend since kindergarten, Ranch, over the monkey movies Clint Eastwood made in the 80s. This was a recurring theme in my life, as Josie Boddle left me some months back after we got in a near-violent disagreement about Pauline Kael, Andrew Sarris, & the Auteur Theory. She pack'd all her dainty & elegant clothing (she had a sort of déshabillé Jackie O. look then) into the Delsey Chatelet collection roller her mother got her last Ides of March & hitch'd a ride with a stranger to Blue Town, where she's been staying with her best friend Rachel, who lives in one of those fashionable EAT-LIVE-PLAY condominiums & works for a high profile tank manufacturing outfit.
I call'd her on my rose gold phone, told her I had some PTO, ask'd if I could visit. She said: Well, fine, but don't you dare talk about the movies or Rachel's job as a warmonger, because I simply don't want to hear it.
Josie Boddle is a self-proclaimed humanitarian, but for Rachel she practices Olympic mental gymnastics & doesn't judge her for her profession, perhaps because they've been best friends since kindergarten, though that doesn't stop me & Ranch – we all went to the same school – from hating her with our graciously humanitarian hearts. Tanks are just so ugly, they ruin the landscape; maybe if they shot confetti at a really smiley B-Day party they'd be OK, occasionally, but blood is just awful – it gets all over the carpet.
Anyway, as we walked slowly along Blue Boulevard (remember, Josie Boddle had a limp), she ask'd if I'd been dating lately & I said: Oh yes, I've been swimming in the swimming pool, gracing the high-dive in my speedo, spreading cheeks on the golf links & dying nightly by black magic enchantresses.
These were all lies, really, as since she left, I'd only had a peck with an usherette at the Red Town Cinematheque, but before it got any further, my love for the films of Harmony Korine unfortunately gave her the ick.
Josie ask'd about work & I said: The dolphins are fine, but the poems are probably starving. She never did think I was funny. She told me she'd been spending her days lifting weights at 24 Hour Fitness in South Blue Town, her nights on the couch reading long, complex novels about boredom & death. I hadn't noticed till then, but her previously namkeen frame had been replaced by lean, wrought-iron muscle, like the skin on her back had been pinched & pulled tight by a paperclip, & her chic Jackie-esque apparel had been converted into neon spandex.
I told her that I probably hadn't noticed because of how her limp & floral print cane distracted, but she said: Or maybe it's your characteristic lack of attention to detail. I said: I don't go to the gym. It leaves me spatially confused & light-headed. She said: Yes, Honey Bunny, I remember.
Looking up, I saw the marquee of the Blue Town Cinematheque looming on the horizon & knew my time in Blue Town was coming to its end. I used my rose gold phone to order a Lyft back to Red Town & wondered
if we were supposed to kiss goodbye.
T. Garrison O’Donnell is a poet from Virginia. His only regret in life is that he is not a character in a Ronald Firbank novel.