Rachel Mindell

LISTEN TO THE DRESS

The truth is a home haircut and a dead bulb

the street seen through a dress

heavy damp, strung

from the window frame.

A sink trap below and the window

beginning to burble. Tell me

about the realest things. Show me how

you comb. Traipsed about,

the dress held downing and sad

it said to the can’t cart of my mind, that

let-go skull, it said real isn’t this street, isn’t

rolls for supper or the biggest batch

of mail/wad of dough. I went wet, I went

heavy and isn’t that home. Now, isn’t that.

DEVIL

Death doctrine

at the peninsula

is key-shaped,

hand-drawn.

Equitable to

squat diddly,

ghetto level

thread counts.

Here, you dropped

your hankie. Between

dealers, we put

a pebble in the door.

Slamming fucks

with the levels –

she has them just so.

We stick with diddly,

we expect equivalent

levels, equate and

familiarize ourselves

with TARE. My bone

hand ruffles the curtains,

my levels are high then

higher. I’ve been perched

here for decades. Text

when you’re outside.

___________________

Rachel Mindell is an MFA candidate in poetry and MA candidate in English Literature at the University of Montana. Her chapbook, A Teardrop and a Bullet, will be released in 2015 by Dancing Girl Press. Individual poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Horse Less Review, DESTROYER, Yemassee, Anti-, Cream City Review, inter|rupture, and elsewhere.