Elizabeth Hughey
2 Poems
My Party
When I shop for friends, I shop drunk.
Will someone get over here and talk to me?I tried lipstick but I could not determine
where the lip ends and the nose begins.This is not my party anymore. Where’s the cake?
It is the party’s party. This is the partiestparty in the party party. Scotch squats
in a crystal decanter like a man in a dress.Even the perfume eats with pinkies.
I want to go home.This is why this is not my party anymore:
It has elected, as a group, without words,like a herd of moths, to celebrate
something else. Taste buds. The end of allwork. No. For one moment, one thought
simultaneously bloomed in each head:nobody wanted to be someplace else.
The men forgot about the game.The slim minnow of lust
left the bellies of boys. One womanfaced the window and fit a whole tea sandwich
into her mouth like a bedspread into the dryer.Even the waiter slicing the roast carved
a thick piece in the likeness of his father.
How Much Longer
Before I know the names of the existing,
I am looking for a new bird. The Goodhawk,
the Noblenut. My funny bird pinned to the road,
a new city. My feelings about maps and shadows
are so similar. Noun verb the adjective,
adjective noun. That is a car ride. I feel about parades
what I feel about skipping pages.Prayerfowl, Luck Jay, Blame Finch. There are many
ways and many reasons for the world.
The cow lows a new milk in torrents into the pail,
a field of eggplants, a factory of basketballs.
Let’s not be sad about vegetables. If there were no births,
and all things were mined, like blue cabbage, like marble,
the coal minor bringing soot-blackened lambs from below.
Once you have spoken, twice I have heard.