Pink
I. Body / Euphoria
science says we are 70% water but I can’t find them, the oceans
promised under my skin — just something sticky,
much too pink. dig deeper, into vestigial
organs, past bright copper abraham lincolns,
the spiders living in my veins, after all
they’re harmless. I could learn to love them
the same way L. doesn’t try to love their hips,
this too is not forever, and L. and I (E.) are dreaming
ourselves into cyborgs, the start screens of video games
where we (optimistic) might be able to find something closer
to our own skin. metallic, this skin could blend
me into the background. am I woman
or am I mannequin? ATM machine, ready and able
to give you everything you need,
provided you already own the credit. this too vestigial,
this too harboring spiders, spitting receipts
you didn’t as for. oil is no closer ocean than blood,
but no farther; and this inaccuracy too you could learn to love.
II. do humans dream of synthozoid neuro-transmitters
never as pink as medical / textbooks would believe and here / everything feels / artificial // are you breathing / neon in or out / of sync with its electromagnetic / pulse, synthetic drum beat / in a club in a city / you’ve never been to either // the club or the city, rarely / stared neon dead in the eye, asked it // to make you dance, but your bones crave it / that pulse. you’ve swallowed it down all your life / until your bones became a wind up / toy tight, with no hope of release until the cords snap at their joined spaces. // exhale // before you can’t / anymore. before the last string snaps and you, neglected / marionette drop / limbless to the floor.
III. error 418: I am a teapot
I’ve never been pink, but believe I have been bloody;
mistaking every shattered thing for love
and maybe that’s why I’m crying tea, crying
coffee, crying jet fuel into my lungs on the slow drive back
from connorsville, a box of porcelain riding shotgun,
I just want to give you every beautiful, fragile thing.
and something about this isn’t right either,
I used to be able to hold my caffeine so much better,
where did the compulsory heterosexuality go? this is [not]
a confession, this is a panic attack held hostage by the driver’s seat.
driving on the wrong side of the road, I just need to make it
three more miles. I’m glitching to the passenger’s side,
who’s eyes are supposed to be on the road now?
it’s not mine, now mine are tracing the faux gold paint along tea cup rim,
sinking me, slip and slide style, down into teapot spout. I am genie temporarily
[temporally] contained in someone else’s auctioned heirloom, I am virus,
blaming every weasel [no one ever remembers to check
for the weasels] in the large hadron collider and like this reality
I too am prone to being a mistake. glitch me baby one more time
this time into the right flesh, right romance novel, right moment before I realized
I was thanking construction for slow moving traffic so I could reach
over the middle console to run my fingers along the edge of a tea cup.
falling backwards into september and someone else’s apartment
where they’re sweeping broken glass into the dustbin. this won’t fix anything.
the tears, the reason there are tears, the realization I already had six months ago,
twenty-four months ago, stored away so carefully in my rib cage.
the cloud would be more efficient. I could lose that password,
accidentally delete it, nothing is ever truly deleted,
but it can be rendered unretrievable by all the right parties.
E.B. Schnepp is a poet currently residing in Chicago. Their work can also be found in Lumiere, Up the Staircase, and Molotov Cocktail, among others.