I’ve had it with having a body.
With windows that won’t open.
Antibiotics. Luggage. Styrofoam.
I’m sick of being a burnt match
bloating in a puddle of anti-freeze.
Sick of the ripening blushes of peaches,
all that Tiepolo pink, sick of rushing
in my ears regardless the brain-stall,
spectral footfalls in ghost halls,
guffaws and slips of how truth leaks out
and goes in. Pinprick or serrated,
what’s the diff I’m sick of it. Sick
of this flesh restricting liftoff,
ballooning at the waist like the costume
of a duck. Maybe if I’d stuck with
the dancing lessons, speech therapy,
the oboe, had a robot do the vacuuming.
Maybe if I made music as I walked
like a goat belled off to sacrifice
and when the psychopomps offer me
yet another heart, this time I refuse.
Come, gazelle, step through my shadow.
Come, rain, wash this face away.
—Dean Young
Dean Young’s book Solar Perplexus is just out from Copper Canyon Press. He lives in Austin, Texas.
