MEGHAN PRIVITELLO
Re-animate
This life was supposed to be
a staircase a suitcase
a sooner than later way to die
But there is a city full of lamps
that are too sad to light:
is to say I am hiding something greater
than a ten dollar bill behind my face
I am worth less than the current
the way it rips a wedding dress
into the anemone of the people
Around my mouth the sky trends
tries to paint me a ghastly blue
until the neighborhood buries me
next to an arcade of flu swept starlings
Loneliness is a lampshade trying to be
a robe it thinks there is a yellow body
to diffuse But the body is not a bomb-
shell It is a century of failures war toys & surges
The body is supposed to be living
it is a casual suit a cassette
a noun that never married its fast-forward
its godly red verb
136 The Paris-American
This life was supposed to be
a staircase a suitcase
a sooner than later way to die
But there is a city full of lamps
that are too sad to light:
is to say I am hiding something greater
than a ten dollar bill behind my face
I am worth less than the current
the way it rips a wedding dress
into the anemone of the people
Around my mouth the sky trends
tries to paint me a ghastly blue
until the neighborhood buries me
next to an arcade of flu swept starlings
Loneliness is a lampshade trying to be
a robe it thinks there is a yellow body
to diffuse But the body is not a bomb-
shell It is a century of failures war toys & surges
The body is supposed to be living
it is a casual suit a cassette
a noun that never married its fast-forward
its godly red verb
136 The Paris-American
Meghan Privitello's first book, A New Language for Falling out of Love, is forthcoming from YesYes Books (Fall 2014). Poems have appeared or will appear in Kenyon Review Online, Gulf Coast, Sixth Finch, Pinwheel, Drunken Boat, Boston Review and elsewhere. She currently serves as co-editor of The New Megaphone. You can follow her on twitter @meghanpriv.