THE DOSS HOUSE
Danielle Blau
In here
you must spread yourself
thin as a deity, or else
curl up precious
and wormlike.
I knew a guy
slept Indian-style,
wasn’t long before—
well, but you know the rest.
No Mister In-Between
as they say, half-empty glass,
goddamn! and all that.
I was flopped into
a charwoman’s blues
but I might have been born
into tennis whites, or a Czech boy
with silvery lashes, for that matter.
In here there are all sorts
but we’ve all of us
all but forgotten
the slow shriek of the generator.
Or when we don’t, we parse it
into a billion birdcalls,
it’s instinct by now.