Guarini Speaks

The prophet of insignificant
events—he speaks from inside of a shoehorn.

His
houseplant

has cracked a joke in the meantime,
a dead smile

upon his mother’s face, blooming original as
decay

as she responds, encouraging
shame for the subject matter.

There is a white
shrieking figure somewhere
in the painting.

He waxes on the comedy of a corkscrew, and still

the plant insists on dying,
the mother cries at the whitened mirror,

his speech is extracted from the
Earth

with forceps, a snail

sliding out
of the cloud