Author: Mariah Perkins

I am a drunken whore, which explains
the artfully ripped cleavage.
I’ve just started in on the sugar rim
lemon drop with framboise to fuel
my fabulous thighs. Last night I got a flood
of friend requests. They were looking
for anise flavored blow jobs.
I don’t really like anise, but whatever.
Sometimes I sit on the curb
like an uprooted dandelion,
a flopped fish. Dry red streaks
on my cheeks. I used to be eighteen.
Flamingos are such an unlikely color
and pose and creature on this earth.
Same with wombats and beavers.
Even sparrows.

Down at the paper mill, we’ve got pigeons.
They started coming around to eat cornstarch from the silos,
and there were more every day, until it got to be a plague.
They’d roost in the breezeway where we walk in,
take birdbaths in the drip from the unloading hoses,
lay eggs under the floodlights, use them like incubators.

Added to that, they have this buddy system–they call friends
until ten pigeons is fifty, is a hundred, is a thousand.
How do you get rid of something like that?
What worked best was when the guys on 35 machine
got pellet guns and had two pigeon hit-squads–
a driver, lookout and shooter–making the rounds in golf carts.

When the mill manager called an executive meeting
to talk strategy about “the pigeon situation,”
one of the supervisors, Rodney, said something was
being done about it, meaning the hunters on 35.
I don’t know how word got out, but people heard about
a bird shooting, made calls saying it was inhumane.

Company spent a few grand on a bird-relocation specialist,
who carted them all off safely. They were back in less than a week.
Now there’s more than ever, and since we don’t want to kill them–
pellet guns aren’t an option anymore–we just get out the water
hoses and flood their perches. They fly away if they see us coming,
so we wait until night, sneak up, and hose them down from behind.

because whenever my father wanted to spend time with me, he would take me fishing – and, for some reason, going fishing was always treated in our house, like an act of rebellion against my mother – who never minded that I got dirty, or wore torn jeans. Sometimes, she would plan to come with us – though when she’d describe the fifty pound lunch she wanted to pack, or how she couldn’t stand the smell of frying fish in her kitchen, we would bolt out the back door, wave triumphantly from the car.

then, after a full day of fishing and a bucket full of catch, we would come home to disheartened Mother – who fried up the fish anyway, and watched us eat – her mouth, a thin, tight line. And we would laugh and joke, and I would enjoy the fact that I was on my father’s side, joining in on the ravings about the deliciousness of the fish, though not quite as good as the salmon berries we had picked and eaten for lunch.

but, the truth was, I found the fish quite bland and smelly. And the sight of my mother’s hurt made my heart lurch. For some reason, I was determined to pretend otherwise. At least, that’s how I’d like to remember it.

it was the summer of floating grass: flames on axis:
solar footprints–

my morning star provoked echoes inside the body. did you hear,

wings of birds and cervixes of women are
similar beauties: white horses in a fragile sun;

i’m dressing up daily in the bruises
of peaches–

for the light of lunar waning
illuminate between my legs: the last brightness

of being burned.

i remember meat of twigs, fingertips
of woods & lightning in an empty field–

the rest is forcing the sky down
in my blooming throat.

can you slice through the nerve of a flower?
can you carry my body (in fragments) in the suitcase
        until the hills invent a witness
        until I become a plastic doll?

in the fire, in the snow’s bones, i find some syntax
to hold the rain hostage

until i’m small enough to be eaten again
or melted lovingly in a crooked spoon

I rip so many pairs of underwear. I lose
one of every sock. maybe I should cry
from looking at abstract art more than I
do. sometimes I mumble on the phone.
sometimes I giggle when a boy nibbles
my ear, but I like it that way. it’s more
raunchy that way, if raunchy is the overall
amount of square feet of my body that
is enjoying a sexual encounter, then
raunchy is sneering while smacking you
with a pillow, suffocating you in make
believe. raunchy is telling you I’m
gonna fart if you don’t give me some
space when I said I needed a break,
raunchy is the amount of times we
can sneak naked to the bathroom
without getting caught by my awake-
at-odd-hours-of-the-night roommates.
so typical me, taking a poem about
things I’m bad at and making it
about my kooky sex patterns. or
maybe what I’m trying to say is that
I need to be having better sex. I
want the better sex where we don’t
have sex at all because you’re still
crying about your friend who is dying,
or the blowjob we interrupt because
one of us is having a flashback to trauma
and needs to be coddled and held. I want
the orgasm where we scream louder
than we need to because the downstairs
neighbors asked us not to, with their loud
music. I want so many layers of socks, on
us, on the bed, littering the floor. If the
velocity of a sock flying towards the
window is increased by the joy of
my naked body in its enhanced
gusto, then maybe I’m a failure for never
shattering any glass, for never feeling
the type of freedom in nakedness
that an elderly person does, looking
over their scrunched up skin and
counting the hymns and prayers of
their mothers. maybe I don’t know
how to relax. maybe if I keep buying
more dried fruit, I can poop with the
fervor of a broccoli-stalk-obsessed
caterpillar. maybe I should watch less
porn where people shave themselves.
Stuff the sock into my mouth. I wanna
black out.