Canada

To little
girls they attempt to teach grace from
an early age. Lips sticky with the wax of
fake orgasms. Roses upon completion of display.

If your bedroom
is your mind, do you mind?
If you mind, mayhap you
should rearrange.

On application of the hypothetical
law, mine is a Persian rug of
mockingbirds, seven bared
breasts. Memories

are flecks of silver and
light caught in a lens,
only the past is material,
tell me where it all went wrong.

Tell the heap of flannel in my chest
how it could win Helena. Whisper
to my tires that they will reach Canada.
I fell into a love for her.

If my bedroom is my mind:
(I note the absence of Helena.
Tentatively, surely,
she must appear.)

For now I nurse a nausea,
track a pulse in my thigh.
Rain came. An acid bramble
bloomed in my stomach.

I dreamt of
free fall.
Death was imminent until
the river.

Of little
girls little is expected. Sex speaks
a language in time.
They find they are fluent.

Tell them where it all went wrong.
Whisper to their tires
that they will
reach Canada.