Improv 1, Week 3

passage from:

Seven Days of Falling
--Adrian Matejka

Today, I'm assimilating like margarine
into hotcakes. I'm getting down

like Danny LaRusso after the against-
the-rules leg sweep. So low,

I'll be a flower in common decency's
lapel. Factual, the same way "Zanzibar"

means sea of blacks to anyone who isn't
from there.

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Today, I'm unwinding like the hem
of your favorite sweater. I'm forgetting

you don't care, like when your mother plowed
into the mailbox with her rusty Plymouth.

I'm tired of flagging you down, reminding
you that birdseed does not belong in crumpets.

What would your mother say, god rest her soul,
if she knew you always wear red on Sundays?

The best jackknife I ever witnessed
was on I-85: hundreds of chickens skidded

the pavement, traffic jammed for miles.
A friend of mine, Nadine, (you remember her

right?) was flying into Atlanta and saw the whole
mess from the air. She likened the affair to a pillow-

factory combusting, a mushroom cloud of feathers.
I embroidered a pillow once with the inscription:

Please wipe your feet here. I sold a set of twelve
to the local Red Cross, although I thought best

that the pillows belonged in Cracker Barrel
gift shops. Tomorrow I will tighten the bolts

of my four speed Huffy and comb the streamers
with my fingers. Maybe I will scrap the bike

for your birthday and we will become lone walkers
together. Pedaling up hill is rough

on my ulcer anyway. They say George Hincapie once biked
from Portugal to Austria in three days,

he said it was so easy it was like pedaling
in your sleep. You, however, were never one for travel.