chicken alanine
Life is other people
entwined too much
in table hockey,
double-fisting sticks,
a leg to mouth.
I’d pick with you
the bouquet of sporks
we synthesized
beside the wire.
reddened monkeys-in-a-barrel
So much generic brand
diaper
needed among
undigested hendiadys
that chain without fiber:
I mean we all have
clucked rhetorics
when our bottoms felt lumped, cloudy.
Let that tell a joke.
In all truth, the unit repeats
an enormous model of compatible
until plot lost.
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Vanessa Couto Johnson (she/they) is the author of the full-length poetry books Pungent dins concentric (Tolsun Books, 2018) and forthcoming pH of Au (Parlor Press, Free Verse Editions Series 2022), as well as three poetry chapbooks. Most recently, Vanessa's poems have appeared in Pine Hills Review, streetcake, Scrawl Place, Star 82 Review, and Superstition Review. A Brazilian born in Texas (dual citizen), VCJ has taught at Texas State University since 2014.