used to be too much pocketed

times in savings

                        my messy purse

a Harpo Marx exhibition of jetsam

spread out too thinly

                        sprightly odds-and-endings

the recipes for a bacchante menu meant-

well as a matron taking packages

                         from her bosom

or the pout with an onyx lump unfolding

into a black spacesuit before the boss

                        and the dire vet visit

an oblivious wearer of an origami dunce cap

in the bustle of people wearing smiles

                         words would be stumbles

inopportune as a show-all from the insides

gookie Harpo-lip softshoe and burgeoning

                         with taste buds

instead of an apology for spendthrift stashes

scissors at his sayings

                          someone else's tie

a torch of twenty matches in the moments

that grope for hands-on of the missing

                          sideshow the music.

OM

Tacking towards footstool agreement

            individual wills   lingered in leases

while our tenancies become tenuous

books above on the slant like pasts

            headgeared floorlamps flipped on

in ameliorations after ripcord conclusions

stompings alongside radiated card tricks and riddles

            caches of hypnotic straight-man paper

through keyholes of commotion incline to clandestine

vases stashed with misread messages until the

            gummed-up      item-moneyed day

a diagram coded and named and elastic as DNA

twined stresses bursting vase and exit and eggshell

            the level eye takes its elevator uplift

vapor vestibules            deepsetting shelves       azure unawares

Copyright © Katherine Holmes, 2009