excerpts from your secret diary that is now mine
i fantasize about strapping my boyfriend to the top of my car.
it gets really exciting when he starts screaming and the winds are too high to hear him.
i drive until the sun goes down so far we can’t see the hills
because i mowed them down with my big wheels.
and i am laughing.
he will stop screaming when i stop laughing
because i have created a great hollow in the earth.
a grand canyon, really.
just for him.
he is unstrapped
he looks in my eyes
i throw him in the pit.
we have rough sex
he says i love you here is a gold star.
The Nine Circles of Ikea
she climbs the curious escalator
to the basso loco
up and up to
1. Kitchen utensils.
hanging from the fruit-flavored walls is the ripe Betty Crocker. she punctures me with desire, I mean the steaming oven and the thrill of chopping. the apron corset teaches you how to cook everything. her apron sex is amazing, among the boxed arrangements with the quiet sharp objects and the dazzling rouge lipstick smile. these are boxes of the happy. the order is the beginning of order
2. Window and floor textiles.
if there were a window,
there would be light.
her drape, the let-down hair,
this skirt, this hand.
the mirror does not wave back
when it shatters.
be my friend tonight,
be my
3. Food storage.
the box. in the box. the box in the box in the box. on the box under the
box beside the box over the box over the box over the box. over
4. Bed linens.
soil the sheets, save the bed. soil the bed, save the sheets.
burn the sheets. burn the bed.
when there’s nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire!
5. Shelving.
roof: dead birds. roof: bats. roof: drums. roof: darkness
the roof is on fire! the roof the roof
6. Storage.
bring the decapitated head. we must study his brain. not him. the head.
only the head. we must crack his skull and study his brain. only the head. here there is
7. Lighting.
i’ve got a man who’s always late, every time we have a date, but i love him. Yes! all those lights make you blind, but this is heaven. here you’ll find the feeling. is you is or is you ain’t my baby
8. Plants.
feed me, said the plant. feed me! tendrils crawling up your neck. feed me
9. The food shop at the end with Nordic foodstuffs (plus hot dogs and ice cream cones).
gosh. i haven’t bought the lingonberries. my husband will flip. he adores the lingonberries. with the water crackers and the fine linen napkins on the crushed velvet tablespread. we’d make love but not before the dustcloth runs over the tables. he hates the dust. it makes him feel like an ant under a magnifying glass in the sun. what shall i do? i am a mattress with a yellow ikea sticker in the as-is furniture. he goes to bed with me, and i wake up with him gone. like a bed, i am lonely. who else will sleep with me?
10. Checkout.
satan is red like santa. he places a claw on your hand.
trap door Buddha
trap door Buddha has a hole in his brain
a bronze plate in the bronze skull of his bronze head held together by four screws
(where birds nest inside), you see his face supported by
massive earlobes, which are growing like the rings of a tree only bigger and no root of it can be cut down.
trap door Buddha has three feet with three legs
and a body of sky above his subterranean head. the place where the head only inside is
a good place to rest awhile. just to sit inside the Buddha is a place to laugh and the walls
of Buddha’s bronze cavernous head echo with your surprise. it is a good way to hear yourself
curled inside the Buddha’s head sinking far into the ground like a bronze submarine into
the subterranean depths of your little head and
in your head is a three-legged Buddha nestled inside, resting three legs on the base
of your skull they root pushing out your limbs as you squeak out of the trap door
on hands and knees nose pressed to the ground and you roll over
and smile. paws in the air. just like that.
the baby birds peek out from the Buddha’s eyes and chirp for a while.
Hear These Poems Out Loud:
Annie Won is a poet, yoga teacher, and medicinal chemist who resides in Somerville, MA with her two fuzzy Maine Coon cats. Annie is particularly interested in spaces of mind, body, and page and creative opportunities within these domains. She is a Kundiman Fellow and a Juniper Writing Institute scholarship recipient. Her chapbook with Brenda Iijima, Once Upon a Building Block, recently published with Horse Less Press (2014). Her work has appeared in Shampoo and RealPoetik, and is forthcoming from EAOGH. Her critical reviews can be seen at American Microreviews and Interviews.
