Song Stuck in My Stomach

Repeat, repeat. Pull the curtains back with your teeth

to say that a stage is a mouth that bites at the seats

and never picks flesh, never wipes off a bone

or spits out hairs, cheeks sliding over its eyes.

You wanna know about the world? Another day,

another five minutes half under the bed feeling

for a wallet, for the most important form you needed

to fill out with the most personal of your information—

does your mother still love you, how many

plastic bags are crumpled in your trashcan, what of the books

shaped liked halfpipes hugging your ass?—and obviously

this is the kind of stuff you have to look up, or look

at to remember, which no one does. As for your mother,

in her closet are empty milk cartons filled

with screams at you and your father—all next

to a bank line of old costumes that she sees through

her sepia’d eyes. Some days I droop in my chair

just to see if my back is still as flat as my feet.

Repeat, repeat. Everything comes again that ends

in E—A—T: take your seat, because the show

will begin shortly (Look at this fool pulling

the curtains with his teeth!); and the beat,

which only goes away if you think it is gone;

but we must eat—or at least, in the wake

of dropped eyes browning, rolling across

the dusty street of boxes under your bed,

try and see your breath when you think

the world will end if you go hungry—