LAUREN MALLETT / 4 POEMS — always crashing

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PILLOW TALK IN THE THORACIC AGE

Tell me again the story of the head without a body.
The one you thought up days ago as you lay in bed
and the morning moved toward you. You thought of how
this head might be just a head. You thought it comedy.
And now with the duvet’s leaves light and dark
grey tucked below our chins, tell me how the head
might want company, how you might carry
it to Easter Island and leave it among the basalts.
Trachytes. The red scoria. How instead of a face
on the moon you saw a crab, then the crest for Wu-Tang.
I might tell you this is a story I would hold like a stone
in my hands. Might your head. Were you alone
even on an island of rock you would live.
With all the things there to talk to.

AMIDST THE AMERICAN CASUAL

Her breakfast egg drops
from its brown shell to
the buttered pan and
bleeds gold. What she
thinks will spread vastly
is caught
by an inner membrane,
a net with knots
for its ties. The garbage man
with sunglasses a waste
management specialist.

But he still has to bend
down to pick up the stray
can that falls from
the automated refuse
dumping device.

The permutations of egg are not lost
on her here. She saves a stack
of cartons for the market
that starts up again in May.

They call this a domestic poem:
everyone always lingering
in the kitchen.
How does she like them?
Her eggs, her guests,
her handing over; her
change gets made.
She planned for this,
this broken partway,
this astoundingly and orbital.

He sees her through the kitchen,
the outline of her torso,
face obscured some
from the glare, trash
unfurling into the
truck, emptied can he’s
tilted and wheeled
back. Stranger how
she keeps from herself.

PREDICTIVE TEXT

am I doing something wrong
when the sun is the only way

to go back and forth between
us and to remember that the best

way for me to send the document

is better than the intended recipient
of this week so I’ll just have to be

a good time for us to talk about this
on the other hand is not intended

to provide the most only way to go

back and enjoy the rest of the most
important words of the entire

by chance could you help me with
the other hand is not the intended

for a while and then I could see that

it would be great to have you ever been
to the next week most intended hand

Lauren Mallett’s poems appear in RHINO Poetry, Smartish Pace, Sou'wester, Passages North, and other journals. She lives and teaches in Indiana. Read more at http://www.laurenmallett.com.