Nebraska

after Lisa Robertson

i put on the welding jacket and became a welder
a pair of pieces put together puddled hot heat 
it gooped & two metal hunks became one

i was the first welder ever to get into it for the fashion
the hot red jacket with the fat snaps that paraded up my neck
molly said i had to google fla sh dance and everyone agreed i looked
just like her. i put on the jorts corset three separate ways. 

my sartorial proclivities ma de me a worker and vice versa

knitting made me a poet an d being a poet made me a welder
it’s just how the se things go

things get hot when you wear a hot jacket

things get steamy wh en you heat up metal

to be hot versus to look hot versus to heat things up

my hand collected a splinter of metal and a bit of blood pooled out the hole
i bored a hole through a pie ce of metal and kept spelling it whole

i could overhear sally jum ping through the wall filled with holes

i just look like this, it doe sn’t say anything about me
except for everything. the m ore people i’m around, the more
i’m doing, the less i think a bout my body. the more i think about
clothing. my body is just a vessel for dressing and i’m drawn
to people that use their b ody for more. my body

is a vessel for welding now. i put on the red jacket
and i can bring the hot sha rds together, with 
just a hot li ttle squeeze

Bon pissant

my mom sends me the new deer piece in the New York Times.
I don’t read it. I don’t take my vitamins. even though
I pay so much money for them. They make my hair thick.
Well, thicker. Normal thickness for people with thin hair.
My hair gets thin. My friend also sends me the new deer piece
in the New York Times. She writes deer deer deer. I am writing
an essay about deer. Which is why everyone keeps sending me
the deer piece. I don’t know why I’m not reading it. I’m not reading it
because then I might have to write about it. You don’t have to write
about what you don’t know about. Don’t people realize this? 
I hate being ignorant because I love being right. This is a terrible trait.
I also hate not already having the information that will make me right.
This is not always true. I love reading. I hate reading the obvious thing.
I like when I read a random thing and it makes me realize something new
about the obvious thing. And then I get to feel like an outdoor explorer
or someone who connects dots. I love connecting dots between things 
that have no business sharing a line. And I love when people say what is the connection.
The connection, it turns out, is me. I bought a $10 plastic grinder
on South Street last weekend, because my roommate gave me herbs
their sister grew. And I wanted to roll a non-tobacco cigarette by hand.
Except I hadn’t rolled a cigarette by hand since sophomore year. And that
was a joint. And I remember being good at rolling the joint. But I am so bad 
at rolling cigarettes by hand now. And now I have this little clear plastic grinder
that I can grind my herbs in. I did not think I would be someone who smoked
literal ground up flowers. I have a hand rolling kit I found in college and kept.
It is in a Sushi Chef brand Sesame Seed bottle that looks like it should hold bay leaves.
It has rolling papers and filters and the perforated Raw Wide Tips pack and a little plastic pen cap
to poke the filling down. So I rolled a couple herb cigarettes by hand. And I thought
huh, I bet this would be really good with some tobacco in it. And I haven’t seen
a deer in the wild in a while. I am not a very good outdoor explorer. I am better
at connecting dots in my room. Like a conspiracy theorist, or a child 
with an activity book. I would like to see a deer like I would like to smoke a cigarette:
in theory, and not if I have to create the conditions to do so. Though it is sometimes more fun
when you create the conditions to do so. In fact, usually. It is more fun if you go somewhere
you don’t expect a deer to be and then it is there. And then you stare back and forth.
Like the time I peed behind the writer’s house at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop
as my boyfriend and I were driving across the country in the wake of a derecho.
And the door was wide open and an alarm was spilling out. And I peed in the back
beside some big fans, and I could see in the windows: desks piled with papers
that looked untouched for many months. And a deer showed up and we locked eyes
while I peed hot and steady into the wet grass. And then it turned and ran
and I never went back to Iowa.