Mousseline
on the bun of the burger trucked outside coffee where couples’ round glasses palm tree back at me, the tattoos lank inky limb-long, vanilla van soft serve and milk crumb raw honey butterscotch treacle threading twisty betwixt two spoons in powder blue to match paper, clamshells, cartons, compostable color of lint swaggy off denim, serenity ceilings, selenite, big fat crystals to heal cheat days—future—comma ghost of, AKA permission to rage this weekend of mint green tea and apple, no cane juice, dark griddle hope and hotdog buns, foie gras links, schmaltz crispies, good popcorn, butters in every kernel, salt like a pedicure must, $6 extra for calluses, every filer masked, in platforms, cleaning Greek feet, Tri Delt locks Pantened, combable emulsive, bored mouths wandering into curves and smirks and scrolls, pulling up pictures of nails. Acrylics come out talon. Drill or chainsaw. Bath blue I always call Windex. An index of events and wines and wants. When? From now until you call me girl. Girl with and without me. With a couple looped into okay at a table, black heart and forever. Trucker hats show whatever. Something to suck up a straw. Hope or amity or vodka, coralline, carmine, anthracite? Disease is another color. Blood, a dot in my eye, wandering about rosemary salt on the fries, the sort I eat with a fork.
JoAnna Novak is the author of I Must Have You (Skyhorse Publishing 2017) and Noirmania (forthcomi
