I’ll tell you of a song on Apollo’s nightstand
about the gutters of Paris and themes of

magnolia vines, emptiness, statistics about tsunamis,
churches, zine artists, twelve-year plans,

the debutante meetings on Tuesday evenings,
where pink is disallowed and cucumbers encouraged,

arthritis, green mango skin, Gucci, God, lilypads,
Chrysler’s year-end sales event, bonsai trees,

and gasoline fog suckling on the Golden Gate Bridge.
I’ll tell you of a lyre under the bed of my lover,

and those idiotic city officials who paint cobblestone
though everyone knows cobblestone shouldn’t

be painted and certainly not yellow, deliberately
singing of spring’s cruelty, hope, and synagogue spires

where full-grown peacocks circlejerk and discuss
gender politics, the suffocating Amazon, barley tea,

flamingoes, poker tables, potato-leek casserole,
the Tuesday evenings spent womanizing,

that is, becoming a woman, and wearing christ
dead around a neck, beautiful in floral Prada sandals,

enjoying a cocoon dress and how it crinkles
like money under six-inch heels.

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Tashiana Seebeck is a recent graduate of New York University and a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer. She is a recipient of the Tory Dent Research Scholarship and her work can be found in West 10th, New York’s Best Emerging Poets, and forthcoming in Jam & Sand. She would like to thank her parents, her friends, and all the sea turtles out there.