Sticker Booklet

Naked OohNue
When she visits I will show her the mourning doves outside
the village market where I sell soggy croissants buried in ham.
It’s where I study tourists, birders here for high-class Montezuma.
Secretly, she is glad I still love birds and jobs.
Other things we love now, still:
dependable shoes,
pressing our chins into textured surfaces,
smoke plumes,
and finding ways to be more naked.

While she spins in my elbow-wide kitchen,
I develop a Julia Child obsession, 
and I learn how to cook foraged vegetables
in butter, butter, butter. 
I leech chicken livers in milk 
and we give each other nauseous, weepy glances
as we eat the organ meat.
She buys a sewing machine
and alters every dart and hem.
Maybe when we have clothes that fit
we will no longer want to be naked.

We touch fabric in the antique mall,
dressing our nails in dust and dry rot. We compare the burbles,
sounds, that surface in our sensory seeking:
“ope,”
“egch,”
“oohnue.”
We try on floral hats made out of velvet and acrylic canvas.
We look in every mirror for our images to be.
Secretly, she’s thankful I still squawk and stare and giggle.

“The more we age the more people notice the humming,”
I warn her. Regardless, we make off-key chords in the drug store,
syncing rhythm with the LEDs. 
I buy her an ice cream and in the car we research automatic sliding doors. 
“Sometime you’ll be less nervous when you see them,” I say. 
She grimaces, and secretly I am thankful when she asks to watch “The Jetsons.”

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About the Image:

Elements in the header collage are taken from sites like Morguefile and Public Domain Review. The blue ink background is a “so-called Impression Figure by Margaret Watts Hughes”. You can find more of my collages here.