Some Assembly Required

Alone, I learn the broken art, collage.

I see your hair around a dozen heads–

too short, too long, too honey blonde, too brown.

Two weeks ago your body, pregnant,

played in Fairmont Park

swinging a small blonde boy

I thought I knew.

The head was wrong.

I saw your skirt,

the purple one down to your ankles,

moving too fast, too lightly tonight

on Browning Street.

Michelle Pfeiffer impersonated you, so amateur, again last night.

Someone suggested Terminator II. I knew

I'd be reduced to burning chrome and LED's;

I passed. I'll choose the pieces.

Given a shopping spree in WomanMart,

I found your jaw, your nose, or something nearly like it.

I found some fragments of your laugh

on the floor below the laughter shelf.

They cut my fingers, and I licked the blood.
I found the weight of you; I took it to my bed,

but it was leveraged wrong, misbalanced,

out of trim.

I found the height of you; I watched it bob behind a cedar fence.

It's not enough.

Mary Shelley's monster haunts my night.

I stitch the patchwork woman, snug the seams.

I look for lightning.

–January, 1995