Cowl

For starters, she sent away for herself. Flat-rate, no brainer, her replacement has arrived, but how to begin the end?

The mail-order bride unfolds a paper airplane for a crossword puzzle, down and across: score the fat, she tells herself, heat the succotash, and, lady, fix your hair, say a prayer, practice the piano. Learn gospodin-speak for gringo misers of Pinnacle Mountain. Scald the red eyes for gravy in stovetop plot of ham juice plus sugar water.

She wraps the paper puzzle around her head to adsorb as thought and sings scales in middle C, kleine nachtmusik to appease black skies w/ strange stars:

Bun bungle, she intones: 

hun hunger

jon jonquil

pun punish, no, punt 

sun sundries, or Sundays,  a mon month of 

ton tonsil 

won, wonton, ha, ha, wonder what’s inside

Okay to tongue Old Country tom pung (a one-horse sled on skids) for toboggan

—winter fun word on the slopes w/ gun gung-ho States-side.

So far, so good.

Stirring lees, she spells words and files the obit in the grease in case sudden death, hers, his, gasp, them both. Their heirs demon-bright with fixed enameled smiles—babushka dolls on toy shelf or table, a paperweight collective, nested wooden wombs, hollow like the Trojan Horse, treacherous with fake news, nonstop mama lading, daily racket, clacks pitched for different ears and different fears:

birdsongs, love calls blurring 

self with sound

footsteps in the trees 

whispers on the breeze

Teensy voices tease the rustle of her pelerine, his pelisse, their ringside capote tempting the beast pawing at the doll collective turned noisy Homeric warhorse.

Update the dolls with social rage. Demand serial devour. Exact volume. Hex….

let the boom fall on No-Man’s Land

fracking cracks in cellulite, the Wall 

the new wall that wails, eating cactus

spitting spines, scratching tiny hips

while derecho stretch-marks Iowa

      and silos crush like soda cans.

Spilled corn, cluck, cluck, clean up. Echoes amplify the vacuum cleaner

spewing kernels on the floor

yellow teeth free of mouth and filigree—

niblets glad at last to skitter

with frog-green lima beans and defrosted mice

  under the refrigerator

New house, nice man, a crazy shame chide red eyes. Only her fat self to blame, insane, always explaining the trash:

ambience of room—

degenerate cellulose reclaimed as pulped slash 

pine, wallboard doctored with gypsum 

and sundry rune

die-cut, pasteboard kitty kitsch—

veal nuggets, turkey giblets, tuna flakes in cheese bits 

weight of the

world.

Now to grease lightning she proclaims. Abandon ham. Sing hymns. No excuses. Waxing poetic, she sets the table with refuse reframed as mansard gable:

wrappers dent rectangular, end-fold triangular, 

cellophane glare dares her lose hypotenuse 

and refuse tango with square roots

in square-dance of tangents.

Death, mind your own beeswax. Hive she tells herself. Find a serial belly, a safe ditch. Sound alarm. She rubs a foam meat tray and

screech resounds from substance false as ski-shop snow—polystyrene natty white as fitted fat, liquidambar of ancient pamper, bunting for fleece con content or fish fin final testament should she die serene in sleep. And let the gravy scald.

Stoke the flame. Drop dolls one by one in woodstove. Blind the red eyes. Veil avail. Feed on fire.

Ridicule redeemed with grace, she rewraps cowl,

folds hands into lap, 

lap into brain,

brain into birdsong 

and flies into flames—

a paper hat Phoenix of ash.