Peter Jay Shippy

I walk in the park
and select a maple leaf.

With my Sharpie I write:
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The farmer sent his child
Deep into the orchard
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They say they found me in frozen foods, stretched out
in the cephalopod case, rowing the air
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They told me, fetch the jawbreaker
They told me, take down the wash
They told me, any day now, any day
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I watch my neighbor cut our grass
With his teeth. Clouds pass under
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The large body waltzed the small body
Across the room. A mother and child?
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Because his neighbor was a witch
Lucas agreed to paint her house
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Mother died today or was it yesterday,
I can't quite remember, is funny unless
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As the cellist played a gigue, Bach,
at Virgil's, a cantina on Salem Street
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Draw a zigzag moustache below my nose
in permanent ink, stain my lips with black cherries,
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The birthday party was evaporating, the cake,
crumbs, the donkey, pinned, Mary-the-boy-pony
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When he was 12, he was voted
Most likely to become Satan's spawn
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Each night I prune
your bandages
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A mouth sings ballads, a mouth sucks a lemon,
a mouth hides uncouth words under its tongue,
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At the stoplight in Dogleg children swept metal
detectors over my hood, the road turned
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A curtain of hazy attitude
colors the axis, heavy breathers appear,
sweaters and leaves demand coloratura,
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We arrived and it wasn't so bad. Really
not at all troubling, the way you sometimes hear.
The anthems were fish out of water.
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I should have known first aid. Like I could have saved her.
So I shadowed the professional librarians. I didn't say boo
For two, even three months. Worst case? People will learn
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After the wholly unnecessary
Decapitation
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Night is for ears.
We are prone, and smitten to spontaneity.
I read an essay delineating the uneasy invention of erasers.
...