for Gertrude Stein
Tiny children disguised as tinier rabbits breach
this sovereignty, our circle of houseplants chanting
ad-slogans from lucid dream manuals. I wrestle
them into the Cyclops of our broken television set,
plastic click knob all the way up. They coax open
a descant to the hum of repurposed electron guns
so that any semblance of a future beyond electronic
furniture emits a language of modified windpipes,
empty columns of hiss-and-pop teeny-bops, bunny fur
pockets vibrating mishaps of wind-up robots
they’d resisted the impulse to release until just now.
So we unbury our deathbed book, The Runaway
Bunny, start a mantra to put us back under. Gertrude
Stein appears from the corner of the ceiling, her Tender
Buttons rosy, her late-day catastrophe lips over-
coat running each new colour. Psychosomatic eyes
peel back words, thump the book up to its “little monkey
that goes like a donkey” barking in braille. I cry
and jump up, as if my hair’s a twin-engine enigma
full of wheels but no more trumpets. Everything resembles
tomatoes but this, more than practically anything else.
Photo by catherinecronin, used and adapted under CC.
