Improv 1 (Week 3)

Wheels of Steel
Adrian Matejka

I got me two songs instead of eyes—
all swollen and blacked out

like the day after a lost fight. Two
jigsaws spinning, buzzing the backdrop

for woodshop or emcee, bar mitzvah
or afterset. It’s DJ Run, DMC rocking

without a band, but not without me.
I make it rain. I make it rain on these

shined up rims still spinning after the car
stops. Dubs kind of grind like me

in their perpetuity. I’m the Wizard
of Oz if Oz was a fish fry in July.

Call me Master of the Cracked Fingers.
One song spins forward, the other

back to repeat itself: Every day I’m
hustlin’. Every day I’m hustlin’. Baby,

I’m the layaway payment on a Ferris
wheel. My songs orbit parking lots

and rent parties like the crazy lady’s
eyes when she finds out her lover man

already left…It’s all because of you,
I’m feeling sad and blue. One of my songs

spins backward, while the other plays
forward like sugar mixing in to make

the grape. My joints are the pinwheels
in this parade of moonwalks and uprocks:

See, I like to get down, Jack.


Improv:
“I got me two songs instead of eyes—
all swollen and blacked out”
they play dogged, sidelong at you
two spinning plates stuck on repeat
between your chest and the fur
necking at your ears.
Your cheeks cube rosy when I
ask: would you like your mango with salt?
Then a tripwire: Jerry Leather eyes whip me like boot straps;
I dispatch.

While you drip cobbler from your nails
I sink my hands deep:
thumbing spoons in soap,
fumbling over spatchulas
that stick to your thighs
like saddle bag reflectors.