Seven Analogies
1. Finances
Liken me to a helium balloon untethered and my debt
the vast blue sky into which I’m rising. Small down below,
the child waving is solvency.
2. Affection
Try to be both transparent and productive. This means
a gumball machine bursting with bright colors. Admit there’s an equivalent
between the need for approval and spare change.
3. Self-Preservation
If you make a sacrificial altar and use it,
the actual world will be pacified. Therefore a tender new lamb
is your lungs and you should start smoking again.
4. Beauty
If you narrow yourself down like a rivulet gushing forth
from what used to be the embanked bulk of your body, he will be thirsty
and kneel down to drink. This is to say: phone calls, emails, dinner.
5. Life
Bowling shows trajectory as a long path of polished wood.
The body is a roundness, jettisoned. Each pin: a reminder
that if you near what you want you’ll destabilize it.
6. Self-Knowledge
A kitten pawing string: wide-eyed, clawed. A strutting pigeon
on the sidewalk. A kicked dog. A dead possum by the roadside
whose flesh hives buzzing insects.
7. The Afterlife
A white car on a winter road.
A red fox in the inferno. If in the rain
there were more rain of the same temperature.
-- Kate Angus
