Epistolary

for Erin Martin

I am a handsome and lonely man.

I like to write these letters to the housewives:

Dear Betty, I am a handsome

and lonely man. I appreciate

your zinnias and Buick. RSVP.

I seal them in envelopes made from top-secret

blueprints. Then they get intercepted

by my ex-girlfriends in the postal service.

Dear Erin, I have sabotaged the factories of sleep.

I drive around and around the abandoned worksite,

taking photographs. Smug workers, sealed

in their plexiglass pods. I cry out to them: Vive

la television! Abajo las manzanitas!

Will you write to me? I confess to the housewives

everything, everything. I could curl your hair

around my wrist like a shackle. I could draw

our path on every map in the atlas. Look: we are crossing

the Atlas mountains. It is like The Sound of Music

without the element of escape. I am singing you a song

that I wrote for the people of my country

about their beautiful, beautiful smiles.

When we get to the other side, there will be

a house with steaming coffee and pancakes.

I will stitch this letter into my arm.