100 to 1

As all the white coats say, “there’s a big question mark
here”. They are pointing with a pointer to my love life.
It’s all up there, with stock footage, percentages, ledger
sheets, and pie charts, and nothing in this room moves.

I dream that I fall from outer space into a carnival tent,
where lovers teach me to throw mud at my wounds.
I dream I am barking up the wrong tree. As per usual,
I am smiling a dastardly smile. I could flirt with flint,

something my dead grandmother taught me to do.
Not while she was dead, no, no séances or mediums
here, but when alive, in the cartel of her last years,
when she mistook the roof for the floor, and smeared

too-pink lipstick dangerously outside of the lines,
she could bloom like a desert flower in the night
of the right man’s knock at her door. She might
smooth out her frock, and fluff her hair, but

the real magic was this: Clark Gable or Gregory
Peck, whoever this man was, brought her home
to her senses. Lucidity reigned for a moment,
synapses stirred. So that while she was inching

every moment towards that thing that would
erase her, she could smile like a gamine and recite:
each president – living and dead – from Eisenhower
to Bush, what year it was, and count by sevens

back from 100 to 1.