you talk the perfect amount

YOU TALK THE PERFECT AMOUNT

Emily with a mouth full of some sweet shit repurposed

doting, made you work for it

the dollar is meaningless in libidinal economics

confectioner's sugar in a three-step waltz before bad advice salts

the wound-crevice fashioned by dad's woodcut

knife into blueberry

thumbtacked support beams I graze

when I'm too short for the driver's seat.

Nursing home Jello™ cups have a distinct flavor like they know to act that way in that place and in that place, alone.

Seven dollars missing from my wallet Emily will take to her deathbed,

I follow

the greasy trail of gelatinous fury she feeds me

empty lines over ham radio if it's not my first rodeo:

eczema scales begat dust bunnies begat their own

galaxies in linoleum multiverses—

Emily's sure in one we bloom honeysuckle assholes.

Fame wars rattle onwards / through

the gatekeeper's toothpick corral, where

Nothing changes but the changes![1] Princess

cut-and-dry-heave your filaments

& they propel out with gusto this time.

Hardboiled, the recipe calls for

the older sister I don't otherwise

remember. I drank our mom's uterine lining

I wasn't full when she spat me out, now

I break fast before gas leaks enrage scarlet tigers

& coax oral karst come, vacant

homes in mouth-bone fresh from

the pulpy bits collected when in between

Emily's I fear I found home.

Something happened here that was a little if not a lot and

cradle-wise?

I've let it settle into its silo mold, feed for the chapped jaw of someone's tomorrow

Amelia Emily or Emmeline and Emily Amanda Alma, or

I look for

my therapist in other women, a vision in dry shampoo.

She doesn't blink, my dream girl

her eyes expand to cosmic proportions

until you say uncle,

you're back at three-meter distance longing for full-body microdermabrasion.

This doesn’t pass the Bechdel test.

[1] Gary Busey, Season Three of Celebrity Fit Club

Rachel Stempel is a queer Jewish poet and MFA candidate at Adelphi University. She’s a staff writer at Up the Staircase Quarterly and EX/POST MAGAZINE. Her work has been recognized by her nemesis, Billy Collins, and can be found in New Delta Review, The Nasiona, SPORAZINE, and elsewhere.