Tolstoy Buys Another Horse He Doesn’t Need
My favorite review of War and Peace
is from an anonymous account
that thought it needed
“More war and less long descriptions
of women.”
I am one long description
of women. Blonde hair, brown hair,
hair ripped out of the ground
body like tree body like bush
body like meadow made
of bodies. Body young
and beautiful but also
old body like bog and I’m in the dirt again
asking for nothing but to be transformed.
Woman with Hysteria Prescription
Perhaps I should have been embarrassed
when they performed the pap smear and
the doctor said Hold on I think I see something!
and launched his head down the rabbit hole
of my body, but I knew he wouldn’t find
a secret garden of lilacs or peony bushes
but a post-apocalyptic landscape
that only a few survivors had escaped from.
What I should have said was sorry,
I can’t turn the death machine off which seems better
than calling something a babymaker because
my baby maker can’t make babies anymore,
but perhaps it can be rewired to make porcelain angels
each one identical but also a collector’s item. Hysterical
he called me, No, hilarious. I told him, as I took what was mine
and descended into the sea.
