As dessert follows
the carved roast, the appliances of love are ready
to follow love, inevitable as laundry.
Every good play surely transcends
the backstage machinery, the paint and porcelain
mocked up as stone, but how many

good plays are there? Not many
who get this far anticipate how time follows
like an abandoned dog, who breaks the blushing porcelain
and chews the used wrapping paper you’re not ready
to throw away—as if memory could transcend
their torn state, like rags you still wash as laundry.

You choose your straight roof and the design of your laundry.
After this time the choices aren’t as many
as their consequences, though the cups transcend
their pattern as they’re chipped and kissed, and the mattress follows
the rises and depressions of particular bodies. Who’d be ready
to smash a whole set of porcelain

just to choose anew a different patte ...

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