She Was an Odd Duck

A guy gives me a look after I admit I don’t believe in God.
I drop coffee on my leather brogues and pray
pink soap and water can remove the ink-blot stains.
I make fun of a kid for having a limp wrist and he claims
I use him as a human tripod. I don’t use people, I use
overdue library books and baby doll dresses to feign a personality.
Apparently liking Wes Anderson films is frowned upon.
Here at this liberal arts school where no one knows
Borges or Owen Wilson but piss in laundry machines.
I count shadows once all the walls meet the six pm sun.
I say clickety-clack clickety-clack clickety-clack-clack-clack
during class and get away with it. I get the whole student body
to sign a petition banning keyboards and typewriters
but the voices keep coming back. I see the guy in the shadows.
He hands me a matchbox. Light a match and burn the stains off.
It’s easy to convert. It’s easy to invert thoughts and words and
words and thoughts and sentences and fragments and all I hear
are mumbles and troubles and ghosts and jokes
and a limp wrist typing and tapping like this is all a Morse Code trick.
I began referring to myself in the past tense.
A rubber ducky haunting would have gone quack quack quack
but they didn’t sell those anymore. They sold pens. I clicked
on a bright orange fountain pen until it self-destructed, until all that was left
was a watery instant coffee-flavored afternoon.