ideally
1
one of Eileen Myles
hunched over a barren
Icelandic blueberry bush,
she waterlogged, impatient
2
the keel and ribs of a sunken ship off Norway
3
a northern Stone Age dugout canoe
4
and an ancient Kuwaiti reed boat
5
I'd carefully place the one of a woman trying to put in her contacts in my hand
feel the rightness of her fight with lenses
6
this one is a periwinkle unsure of its gender
7
and this a sea worm with a hole used as mouth and anus
8
here's a starving seal pup
9
and burly armed man holding his dead daughter
10
Kim Jong-un with that ridiculous haircut in lotus position, pouting
11
I'd like one of a pawpaw ripe and split
12
and another of staghorn sumac
13
a rattler sleeping under oak leaves
14
and a muskelunge encircled by a stream of alewives
15
I'd like one of deer teeth and field stones
16
of a fossil trilobite and a mealy bug
17
I'd like one of Jonathan Winters doing anything
18
and my father's dead hands holding a pine sprig
as he was when we buried him all those years ago
19
carved in quince, 2 wrestling
Danish children in snowsuits
20
a Korean mudong in an ajama pantsuit
and horsehair hat balanced on her knives
21
a Salvadorean curandera blowing out
evil spittle
22
a Sicilian stregheria curing a child's worms
23
did I mention a deer mouse with a kernel of corn?
24
an otter in kelp?
25
a flying fox with its wing around a tiny brown bat
who has the sniffles?
26
I want an ivory of a one-breasted cancer survivor
topless and defiant, beautiful
27
and another ivory of my my husband"s
hairless body, strong and cancered, in truce
28
i'd like one of my cat Simon
turning round to look at me as he died
29
and one of tsunami detritus
30
a shelled Syrian apartment building
31
an Inuit snowmobile sinking into melting permafrost
and
32
an old paperback without a cover
33
a child with an iPhone
34
a chihuahua in a coat chasing its tail
35
Curious George
with President George
which one as yet undecided
