chicago, one year later

next on the flat iron a woman sitting across from you in a café
because there is always a woman sitting across from you in a café

you get an hour, two sometimes

bikes get hooked up to metal
metal embeds into concrete
heat brings skin
skin moves the afternoon along

you’ve lost the right to my name
it doesn’t matter how straight a chair you are
or if you wobble to fall over

it never dies
it drones
or purrs like a cat
immoveable tempo
all chairs are eventually poor
eventually bastards
sitting for the sake of direct action

when the chair got sick the only option was to stay in bed
even healthy, as a chair, it had few options

how do you tell that a chair is sick
or when it laughs
or cries
or hysterics the hysterectomy

chair sex, it’s happening all the time
mostly mathematical
but also the game you play across the room
the one where someone gets caught looking

the worst thing that can happen to a chair is fire

the chair says to the new sitter “are you the continental”
the sitter doesn’t answer
both open legs for the new position
a sit that would look good in any age or language
let’s imagine 1957
irish accents
cities get walked everyday, but sometimes they look new
streets incline to open up skin
because every chair knows that skin moves the afternoon along

a self-defining chair thinks of itself as a mechanic

a chair’s mother thinks of it at least once a day

most chairs would drive if given the choice. anywhere.

chair police carry bic lighters
chair bank guards get a book of matches

never play poker with a chair

chairs have no fear of guns

chairs are a volcano, a river of the hot stuff, the note you passed in high school to sherry with the big breasts and the hooked profile that didn’t stop you from knowing where she lived or that she was going somewhere and you wish you knew where that was, but so what, you’re sitting on a volcano just waiting to stand the way a can of coke opens when air is released into more air, when you’re old enough to have a few stories and a direct gaze, when you take the four legs you have for granted, or the good tree that you have in the center of your chest.

chairs are traced back through thin white paper, or wafers bound with sugar and milk,
everything infantile tongued at least once