So finally here's a longish prose poem. It might be able to be cut some places. Your suggestions are welcome.
My Husband Changes the Subject
My husband demands I scratch his back again, hard this time, with my fingernails, like I mean it.
But I’m bored already, trying to avoid the scab where the saddle rubbed him raw, watching our large pink cat at the window, stuck in an impossible yoga pose, cleaning himself. My husband calls the pink cat vulgar, we have the most vulgar cats! he shouts. I keep scratching half-heartedly and my husband tosses his forelock out of his eyes, asks me who’s the best person in the room, no, not just the room, the whole apartment building! I answer that I am, of course, and he exclaims, no, it’s me! And then he asks who is the craziest person in the room and I poke him with my nose, breath in that deep scratchy scent of hay and dung, and say, the pink cat, and if not him, perhaps the little quick black one.
My husband shouts, No! It’s you! You are the most, the most, the most craziest of them all! and I poke him a little harder, this time with my elbow, and I say, No! It’s you! and he says, No, you! and this goes on for about ten minutes, my hand and arm getting tired from all the scratching
My husband changes the subject suddenly: Who has the biggest ass? But I mean, the biggest, biggest ass? So big you can’t fit out the door? So big it eclipses the sun? It has its own zip code?
And I pause, rest my check against the white spot along his ribs, the part I say looks like Bush, but he claims is the county map of Santa Clara, and I say, hmmm. Me?
Yes, he says, It’s so big! Big and splendid!
He then jumps up and stomps his right hoof, once, twice, lifting it way high up, and yells, Everybody dance!
He shakes his enormous haunches in a spastic rhythm, left, right, front, the cats hiss and flee -- he looks like he might never stop.
And here's some pics from the art fair today. In Queens.
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