We could see some mountains I didn’t
know the name of where some adventurers
had recently gone to freeze to death.
She said, Our lives are but torn bits
of party hats blown by breezes of the sea.
I said, When with I lousy swordfish.
My boat would be arriving soon, blasting
gas from itself. In the charming way
of this place, small children dressed
as trees kept running up to sell us
hunks of coal decorated with teeth.
Wool, she said, is an excellent source
of income for these islanders. I said,
Thrumming skylight, bridge of will-you.
We had known each other but a short time
yet my love for her, like a coat hung
from a nail, resembled me in ways I
did not resemble myself as if something
dear had been reft from me only to be
restored with the matchbooks of hotels
I’d never been to in its pockets. Your pain,
she murmured, your future, your rope burns.
Her body, under the massive yak hide, glistened
like a wet yo-yo. Agg tag glatmoogen,
I approximated in her native tongue but
it could not staunch the tears. The clouds
were bells. I wilth almays lube you,
she sobbed, but I mush return hushbang
of factory. Vulcanization is the process
by which rubber fibers are brought into
alignment conferring elasticity but how,
how? With sulfur. I know that now.
And sometimes hydrogen peroxide.