by Daniela Olszewska
Still from UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD (dir. Wim Wenders, 1991)
BIRD MACHINE
Birds are not dinosaurs,
but poets love
to put them in museums.
Bones break differently
in the skyeee. My last curator kissed
an amulet, then grew a pair
of wings. When I die,
I wouldn’t mind
being displayed under glass
(being displaced under glass),
and inside
a marbled hall named After
A Very Rich Vulture & His Second Wife.
CONVERSATION MACHINE
My favorite three words are The Art Institute of Chicago.
That’s five words.
Time to fake a turn.
I’m here for this.
Got that Horizon Jesus.
I’m on a Residential Pass--
--Fixin to head out to the Swedish Bakery.
All the lines don’t have to be good lines, Joel said.
Haven’t heard from Joel in awhile.
His wife unfriended me. I was being obnoxious, though.
We opened up those chests for her, I thought.
No. You’re deeply wrong. You’re thinking of someone else.
But they both had similar styles. Red glasses, maybe?
The kind only thin white ladies can get away with.
It really depends on the hair. You can be any weight.
Just have to turn it off and then on again.
What?
The body. I’m talking about how bodies work.
I’m tired.
Of the body or just in general?
CHICKEN OF THE SEA MACHINE
You emerge
from the primary
source of mermaids.
This is all under a navy
and plagiarized moon.
Like the like the other
kind of Ariel.
With amateur phantom-
limb. The next sky
will make you
glimmer and itch. That hair
will be a disappointment.
It will hit a nerve.
No, it will hit two.
It’s time to get used
to footnoted.
Luckily, it’s still vampire
season. The documentary
crews will leave you
mostly to your own devices.
Daniela Olszewska is the author of three full-length collections of poetry: cloudfang : : cakedirt (Horse Less Press, 2012), True Confessions of An Escapee From The Capra Facility For Wayward Girls (Spittoon Press, 2013), and Citizen J (Artifice Books, 2013). With Carol Guess, she is the co-author of How To Feel Confident With Your Special Talents (Black Lawrence Press, 2014) and Human-Ghost Hybrid Project (Black Lawrence Press, 2017). She is currently shopping around a new full-length manuscript titled Millennia Gram Gram's Magnificent Machines (& Other Poems).
See Daniela read at the inaugural STAGED READING on Feb 22nd. RSVP + more details: here.