Manskin of baskets and toads
The query of your heart
Is not right
Or, is in the not-right place
judging from our spurious land pride
space in the asgard of symmetry…
you bowl your own unbumpered lane
right into our coffee table
why’d you do that?

Man of motionless cowlicks
There’s a crowd in your plexus
And this irritates your heart
Your little doggy too…

Though, wait
We love you in scrabbletown
Where the lawnmower snores
Crabs crunch on the shores
Flakes of paint, well, they flake and are to be avoided
Oh this carnival of youth and timidity –
Belongs not to the boardwalks but to culvert life
We belong to you, too, and hold gently to tiny fires
Mushy trailways and romanticized squiggly things
They’re ok, too,
Just doing their best to be forgotten

***

Rachel Daley is the author of a poetry collection, Plasmos. Her poems have most lately appeared in the Harvard Review Online and here! She currently lives and works in New Hampshire.