Of, supposing to, heat brackets on a bold face trench coat suddenly added, informal as how turkeys run like us, as how the new law says turkeys are not to be killed or worried; therefore, a vase cannot be thrown to break since turkeys might become worried enough to remember they could be light enough to fly in front of others to die without us, but first they must become wild, like any of the various ways I dream of your morning hand in between Hume’s long degradations, the missing shade of blue really your hand in an infinite degradation of itself, mostly in reds as I wake to imagine I was right for no logical reason except for how I feel when I make myself feel near it, when I rub your mistakes, when what is left has become Architecture, analogous to finding the presence of your neck in the trench coat collar warmer than the brackets, and what are they, archaic, like the thoughts your hands keep, like your wire hanger brought here to be hot against all the others, like touching the small of your back because I read you should like it, though lab mice are never asked what they prefer and that could change everything, asking you what you think of syllabic dots until I’m not shocked anymore, you finally waking up to smile in a direction beyond me, the quality of taking it to mean mice always ask questions when we think they aren’t learning, the swinging hanger derivative of throwing out the results when we agree we are in the best painful variant form we never expected, newly marked by how you ask me why I’m wearing your trench coat, my dreaming of flying through blue vases to keep up with your changing hand, to talk to your hand as with my hand, see map of India, practicing the principle that every day is any where else, hoping you’re happy as I am warm with your tempering, refinement, the habit of imagining mice turning into turkeys into your hand I trace on paper with the reddest plume without comparison for you and I to reach for with your hand when it leaves and returns,
 
realizing I must be acknowledging even now I miss you,
done when no longer pink inside,
etc.     

Annie Christain is an English teaching assistant and 2nd year PhD student at the University of South Dakota.  She received BA degrees in English and Philosophy & Religion from Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri in 2003, and in May 2005, she received her MA in English from the University of South Dakota. She is also a member of the Vermillion Literary Project (VLP) and an active participant in their monthly poetry slams.