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for Leslie Scalapino

I only happen to be wearing
a silk, floral blouse, it is a coincidence

The shopping list says:                1. I, pray and pray
                                                     2. for my heart to crack

The shopping list lists:                 3. I, this tradition
                                                     4. I, like my ancestors
                                                     5. not having a verb or action

Let us sharpie expressions onto pine nuts and pretend they are mercenaries..?

And so, I am happy! OK, I am childish
in behavior, not in age      The shopping list: 6. flirted with me

The shopping list says: 7. I, almost sarcastic, modern
in occasion        The sonnet jumps around whenever I look away! Sonnet, behave, I am trying to make a shopping

List: 8. If you keep this up, I will keep messing up
my work and they will think I am losing my mind!       The shopping list: 9. I cannot figure out

this prose of meek intent                                                 The shopping list says: 10. Say something

I, too am
sorry          warm cookies !          cinnamon !

Part of it is missing, the shopping list, Midwestern gothic

I, watch water
swirl down a drain                 chocolate !                  cold cider!

The shopping list: 11. I need fish but
I do not have a license                            Boys and men are so mature

The shopping list says: 12. Let us pretend these beans are poison and we will
                          grow into the ground

Who is she? Who is she?

The shopping list: 13. Coming,
sexually
I can lift a three-gallon ice cream tub above
                                         my head I am so strong                                   The shopping list: 14. I can swell
up and up and up

I have no need for a daughter because I have always been
a mother I am worried about my stage

Really, I,
am just embarrassed

Julianne Neely received her MFA degree from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, where she received the Truman Capote Fellowship, the 2017 John Logan Poetry Prize, and a Schupes Fellowship for Poetry. She is currently a Poetics PhD candidate and an English Department Fellow at the University at Buffalo. Her writing has been published in Hyperallergic, VIDA, The Rumpus, The Iowa Review and more.