CHYNA IN THE LAND OF REVOLVING DESSERTS

Jaguars jump with the grace she pours malts.
What’s extra in the silver vessel is key.
Something for nothing, a bright surface

cynicism. Let’s make some sense of this:
She’s dancing fast but not the two-step,
kneedeep in french fries and recovery
at the fake diner. Her tattoo is blue and

she has tambourine eyes. You can see the veins
in her forehead. Has she ever shot up? Is
she fixed, like her thirteen cats? Me-ow.

Cranberries give apple pie a certain blood-
shot morning-after vibe. Her motor scooter
spews all smoke not trapped in her lungs.
Smokey sings “Mickey’s Monkey” on the juke.

The heavy southern atmosphere, a humid
ripeness best expressed by paired guitars
drunk with reverb and wah or perhaps by

Chyna’s interstitial thigh under job-related
chinos, not to mention a certain need
for the anti-pain in high school and hateful
immediate ancestors, is why she escaped Atlanta

and ended on a Sausalito houseboat, sniffing
mildewed businessmen with money and gay times.
Lesbians lick their wounds and go about

their business. Silence sometimes does not
equal death, but in fact is a pleasant reprieve
from the tinny shouting of everyone’s need to be
special. Life is more than just upside down pink

triangles. The Marlboro Man, unpierced, rides herd
at the AA meetings—caffeine is doled like methadone,
cigs get nervously sucked, slips are appraised.

And she thought consumption was a nineteenth century
illness. The ashram in India will make her throw
everything out: books, clothes, jewelry, cats, vans.
The walk-in closet in her head is more of a problem.