From The Alice Series

[alice reads]

alice: i am a whale thinking,
spreading over the seat of this chair,
dripping my thighs off the edges.

sometimes alice forgot she was unknown.
she sat stony for her closeup,

small pensive smile on her face,
eyes creeping up to the wall clock.

alice was lost in a bright maze,
without much of a plot,

much for memory.

must the story have a beginning, middle, and end?
and even worse, a climax?
she tried to inject it with a lazy angst.

alice drank her coffee, a book face-down on her lap.
the text crawled leisurely in front of her face.
she licked up the complete works of gertrude stein
in the twinkling of the tea.

on her face alice wore only silence.
stark. scrubbed. shiftless.
each sound left its bloody footprint on her cheek.
it made alice quite hungry.

she stared a cultivated, open-mouthed stare,
glazed and swaddled in scar tissue.
they haven't got much evidence yet, alice reasoned.

alice thought, i'll just see what this bottle does.
ice cubes frozen and cracked neatly at the seams,
ready for a glass and tonic.

to the little vials: i'll break you on my tongue
and hold your juice in my mouth
cool, like genuine sulphur.