Angela Genusa

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P’oasis of Assimilation

my name is not just any name

nor am i a petite songbird
content to dine on soapy cakes
carved from second-fiddle suet

nor do i answer to sooey!
déjeuner de le junk drawer is served!

give me just a minuit
to answer your questions

i must have silence to think

my therapist
is a birdcage
draped with a red cloth
and carrying a hobo's bundle

my mother
is an anthropomorphic cabinet of curiosités
a burlesque chest of drawers
with knobs for nipples
girdles stuffed into her ribs

my father
is a black telephone in the desert
the receiver hanging on crutches
leaning over a plate of oysters on the half shell

je veux parler à ma meret!
on ne répond pas
mais oui a cupful of lip service,
a mouthful of porc-épic nom de plumes
and a spoonful of foreign fur
miaou miaou miaou

pas pour moi, non, merci!
no seven wives
no seven sacks
no seven cats
no seven kits
no mewling gravitas
sacks of shit!

i try to starve my furniture
but someone keeps
breaking into my apartment
and feeding all my possessions

and when i lay me down to sleep
slips of paper fetuses at my feet

i wrap myself in noms de plumes for the night:
the before names, the after names,
the “pro” names, the “con” names,
the in-between names,
my name before I was born,
and all the names I was never named.

Angela Genusa began to approach the animals that had want of novelty, and mudra blood flowed profusely, but it was no grave at all, and only four pretty little white balls broke out and floated.

 
 
 
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