Pronouns are for Slackers Poem by Sarah Howe

This morning's autocorrect function flipped
my fat-fingered vision into visor.
I have taken to eating and sleeping

in a different room from myself. Sometimes
I could do with a helmet. She gave him
a glass clock as an expression of love

but really it was a present for her.
You could hear the affection frittering
away. Prepositions are for orphans.

It could be said all we need to survive
is the wet beading on its pillowy
surfaces, the salt-rose. Her fortitude

in briny air a lesson to those prone
to opening doors and leaving them that way.
All those visible cogs going about their

intestinal churn, a Copernican
universe - as insular. Adverbs are
for undinists. Over there seems somehow

further off these days. The dawn is a leash
round a prisoner's neck. Who is holding
the end? More wars than Kodak reels. Recall

how its glossy slink would spool and spool and
fail to catch? Still we don't recognize words
are the last things we should put in our mouths.

Nouns are for bourgeois materialists.
First place salt on the tongue. Then use the thread
to stitch up the lips. What to do with the

cherries? Its too-loud tick kept us awake.
I had to move it to the next-door room.
Then the next. Then lag it at night like a

talkative bird. The heart is a zeppelin,
tethered and leaking. How can we help but
scoff? People with glass clocks shouldn't row boats.