States of Residence

Your hair is that of the recently electroshocked woman
Who lives next door and watches television in her gowns.
Men came on Christmas and left Bud Light on the AC unit

And in the morning the screen door was still open
And she sat there still watching the no-signal blue
And she is still sitting there in the new year.

You cannot conceive that they are laughing at you
When you call from a confidential number and the secretary
Hands me the phone and asks Family in Orlando?

Four years ago you drove the wrong way the morning after,
All the way out to the springs on your way to the drugstore.
They put you in Observation with my more permanent girlfriend

Who you said wasn’t collegial. The sort of thing
One puts well in the past, like how you talked to yourself so loudly
At the museum that I pushed your cellphone to your cheek

Or the eat me tattooed inside your elbow or your films
Of dissolving dots, red-blue-yellow, or a single line meeting
Another line and then – well I could not finish them.

I would like more dusk, more banana leaves, the sound of children
Across the fence, and only from time to time. For a few hours
You said all people do is eat and sleep: men eat and women sleep.

You were beginning to notice, beginning to notice, beginning to notice.
On the bridge, the cars are silvery ants. Your first call of the year.
A boat will go by, a boat goes by, of course a boat goes by.