jr

The Giraffe Poem
by JR

Write like a child.
Think like an outpatient.
Fuck like a bull.

Cheap like a metaphor,
bitter red wine
might stain something
in a white girl's poem.

Maybe many lame scars
like the rungs of a ladder
will explain it.

She has built
a stairway to sympathy -
mad as a rabid giraffe,
cheap as a whore.

So damn bored,
1996,
we get ignored again.

Smells like a chorus
lost aboard the animal kingdom,
America.

Talk show hosts
unite against capitalism -
bearded brotherhood
meets us halfway.

Black flags and cue cards,
littered across a white girl's poem
in the middle of New Jersey,

like the last five seconds
of a rock video,
many pieces of paper,
something torn by someone,
falling slowly to the floor.