Cumbo

Tucked behind the dyslexic hump of your pillow

upside down ring bearer of blessings

Lavender chrome beaker shaped odalisque

standing all by itself, alone

Different from the rest

The precocious fourth grader who rises

Just a little bit taller than her peers

In the center of the volleyball court

who secretly reads Judy Blume

during silent reading falling

inside her body through words

picturing her uterus

a rococo fountain in Versailles

 

The instrument who,

like its loopy earlobe mammalian namesake

Never quite found its place

Among the neon aisles of ribbed trinkets and jolting purrs

Ostracized by the carnival of other sex toys

battery-operated harlequin scepter

Victory cigar chomped on the wrong end

In exile

Simply for being too large with a

Silo tip that looks like something

The artist formerly known as Prince

Would secretly squat on when no one is looking.

 

Punk bamboo spouted

From the soil

Stemmed somewhere

between earth and dreams

 

Alone, witnessing its own mother

Perform outlandish lewd

Acts involving bondage

To keep the heat turned on the winter

you were all of three

 

And how when first you clutched

me in your palm that night

 

As if learning how to drive stick for the first time

 

I wanted to break into your body secretly at first

With a flashlight and ski-mask

A wished-for burglar

Entering quickly through

A half-opened side window of your anatomy

Ransacking your drawers in tornadic fury

Removing the Seraut above your bed

Locating the fireproof safe

Where your every dream is stowed

Hoping to find the combination of your pulse

Lapsing in quick rapid thrust of my trunk

 

Not realizing that you wanted

Me to dissolve inside you

Slowly, to become part of your smile

Part of your experience

Scaling up the ladder of

Love and loss

One teetering rung at a time

In the stuttered apprehension of martyred saints

Staring into a kiddie pool of failure below

Unsure of the place you need your body to go

Groping the purple baton like a magic feather

That somehow will help you to fly

 

--scribed with love for Megan “Combo” canella… double n’s…two g’s