2 poems by Lee Ann Roripaugh

……………….tsunami battles the pink robots / french poststructuralist tsunami

 

 

it’s such a pitiful bukkake

those post-tsunami Roombas

 

cooling down   plant walls

stripping off paint

 

and concrete surface

with their waterjets

 

(Hitachi’s “Arounder”

Mitsubishi’s “MEISTeR”

 

the diesel-fueled

“ASTACO-SoRa”)

 

but hers / is still bigger

than theirs / mythological

 

slippery and apocryphal

as Butler’s lesbian phallus

 

she doesn’t give a shit

about the ring of pee

 

crescenting the toilet

or if the hamper

 

overflows, she’s a hoarder

and slob, deconstructing

 

the domestic (symbolic) order

of the melted-down core

 

with the fluid roller-ball

cursive of jellyfish

 

the spilled milk ink

of octopus and squid

 

the squirted rush

of salt and brine

 

unbolting the bolts

unscrewing the screws

 

oh tin men, she laughs

and laughs at you

 

with her gulls and crazed

seaweed hair / rusting down

 

your hearts to orange filing

and cringing flake

 

tick tock / tick / tock

until they all / stop

 

 

 

………………………….tsunami grrlsplains allergies

 

 

fuck taupe, she says:

milquetoasty blood cells

band-aiding faux infections

 

whitewashing the body’s narrative

spinning a tail to wag the dog

 

anaphylaxis with shellfish

the superhyper bowl of peanuts

 

a gorgeous explosion

of mold spores like cosmic glitter

in the bloodstream:

alternaria, aspergillus,

                                                cladosporium, and penicillium

 

allergens barbarians

at the gate melting down

the candy shell

of the nuclear power plant’s

chocolate core

 

did you know taupe’s

French vague

for the color of moles?

 

which might be brownish-grey

or grayish-brown

or sometimes pinkish

as in rose taupe

or mauve taupe

or faux taupe

 

immune system’s false hope

against REM and mSv

 

so just gloss over it

paint it all taupe

duct tape shut the doors

 

wait for the frantic

castanet clicking

of Geiger counters:

 

Three Mile Island

Chernobyl

Fukushima Daiichi

 

duck and cover

 

stick your head

in the sand

to glow

and smolder

and strobe

 

Lee Ann Roripaugh is the author of four volumes of poetry: Dandarians (Milkweed, Editions,2014), On the Cusp of a Dangerous Year (Southern Illinois University Press, 2009), Year of theSnake (Southern Illinois University Press, 2004), and Beyond Heart Mountain (Penguin, 1999).She was named winner of the Association of Asian American Studies Book Award inPoetry/Prose for 2004, and a 1998 winner of the National Poetry Series.  She is currently aProfessor of English at the University of South Dakota, where she serves as Director of CreativeWriting and Editor-in-Chief of South Dakota Review.