poem: Ainsley Drew
Posted
Different Names for Homonyms
He has snowglobes for fists.
He picks his teeth with atlases.
He casts a shadow in the shape of an empty bird’s nest.
He cannot take your calls right now.
He likes blueberries in pancakes and girls in light dresses.
He sometimes squints when he talks to dogs.
He has no children. That he knows of.
He has shoes the size of canoes and eyes made of tarot decks.
He likes it when he is good at things, though he knows
He is better at most things than you.
He is good at many people.
He has a habit of untying knots.
He knows the difference between
compliment and complement,
principle and principal,
touching and touching,
to leave and to go.
He enjoys street food but not diplomacy.
He grows tired of cities and tired at customs.
He once named a train after somebody’s mother.
He once hopped somebody’s mother.
He has a back made of bricks and a tongue that’s a phone book.
He carries a camera at all times in his back pocket.
He has caught it all on film, even the dirty parts.
His skeletons are alphabetized and categorized in his closet. Check them.
He never sleeps facing a light source.
He rarely sleeps facing you.
He sometimes holds small things to prove he won’t break them.
He might remind you of someone in a certain light.
He says he once heard an old proverb, it’s coming back to him now, he’s coming back.
AINSLEY DREW is a native New Yorker who is nothing but trouble. She works as an advertising copywriter by day, and a non-fiction writer by later in the day. Her work has been featured in The New York Press, Curve Magazine, The Rumpus, Perceptions Magazine, Merge Poetry Journal, and The Wanderlust Review. The author of the blog Jerk Ethic, she hopes to one day be a notorious literary celebrity with her name in tabloids. She also has eleven fingers, so she can type faster than you.