CUT PIECE
after Yoko Ono
What you recognize
in the arrangement of fate
is someone’s trouble
with a body. Who you are
in a museum is a category
a piece of metal will arrive at.
When I saw you, I see you.
I am not those men, not
the women stepping around you
in their delicate heels.
I’d been brought
to a different film
where Anne Bancroft
is getting zipped into her dress.
She has to hurry in order
to escape to Wyoming
from a fictional fashion show
in a tight full-length sheath
so her boyfriend has to carry her
to outrun the contract killers
on her tail. She has a tail
like a mermaid, like you.
She’s that wounded by her dress
on the concrete overpass
in the mirror of a coastal sun.
Someone calls the creepiest guy
“cornball” but. It’s not. Funny.
Funny how.