RE: Decorating!!

woke up and wanted to tear my walls down!

lube up some lines of wallpaper lie on them strip naked!

what would my life be like if instead

of the needlepoint unicorn tapestry I had a sign that said

rosé all day?! what the hell would my life be like

if that lamp were hot pink with a fuzzy shade??

and then I had a furry hot pink phone to match??

what if that goose print were me and a husband and 5 kids

and a freaking golden retriever all on the microsoft screensaver background?

what if I want to have 5 kids but not on the microsoft screensaver background??

what if I want a landline??? so I can make calls from my bed and ash in my comforter

and wake up first thing in the morning and make deals??? what if I lived in a castle!

do you know someone who lives in a castle I can stay in??

let me know! what if my sewing machine were a bar cart?

what if I drank whiskey in a tumbler? what if I had one of those lawyer marble things

that ping pong when you pull one end? who invented those

and why do they exist?? why are there fancy toys for adults that aren’t fun???

would I stop picking my cuticles if I had one of those? would I never get zits

if I had one of those? what if my room were a jewelry box!

what if I lived in a shoe! what if I had 5 kids and lived in a shoe!

what if the shoe was one of those toe shoes that are either really good or really bad

for running? and each of my 5 kids lived in a toe?

what if we didn’t know what to do! what if I painted my walls

blue! what if I painted my walls ecru! what if I lived in a candy house

and ate it all the time after dinner? and then in the morning patched it up

like new??? would my 5 kids like it?? would they live there too?????

and what if there was an earthquake!? and we all got candy crushed???

would we lie there together

licking our sweet little lips?

For All Intensive Purposes

I tweet I eat I wash my hands

rinse repeat my moral turpitude

is taking a teeny break

while I make a piece of toast

burnt bored of boring down on

feelings freaking in the acura

wearing in the vintage versace

ordered online to feel

velourious and my crypto coin

spiked my drink is wet

my lips are wet my larynx

is arid my lunch is eggs

again my lunch is a different

kind of eggs prepared for no

good reason it felt important it felt

woah now turpentine is airing

out my window moodily

ajar so I refrain from passing out

in a fun and cute way a blimp is going by

on the beach we pointed out blimps

like cows on the beach we ate blintzes

cheesy with extra crumbs after

swordfish hmm they went away

after the overfish mm they came back

i’m waiting in line

for bagels everything on them plus

the salt i’m writing this half-

hazardly half martyr half

dumb bitch ok…

I was taking out the trash mostly

my hair and someone blondish

Earth Day Again

all my mirrors are scum

mirrors when i look in em i see dirt

i take my reflection with

one billion grains of salt

solid sought sod all the

above

if u lick my face you’ll get thirsty

like when u taste the pink salt lamps

porny condiments

all my mirrors are greasy

mirrors when i gaze upon my face

i see smudges my face is a painting

i’m trying to oil in the highlights o i’ll boil

fifteen and half cups of tea a day

at the least least fumbling

mugs on every surface

getting more unprayerful

day by monthlong day

here comes the parallel

they say it takes ten thousand hours

to finish a day and that’s my religion

they call it mugging for the camera

because grinning that much is parasitic

teeing up teeing down teeing shirt teeing totally

my oil painting looks more like me

than the me in my grimy mirror and

it’s not even a painting of me

my mirror runs on vegetable oil

mayonnaise lingerie

what other furniture tastes good: wood

if you loved me you’d drink my snot

pepper pep her pay up or

season yourself in san francisco good luck

climate’s password encrypted and it’s not 123

or password

i feel my face is matte

i feel my stomach is extra glossy

i feel my mirror is a tesla

i feel my desk lamp tastes like barbecue chips

i feel becoming scum

of earth is what i want

to become: scum-one

Juliet Gelfman-Randazzo is a writer and visual artist who has recently relocated to Philadelphia. She is an MFA candidate at Rutgers University-Camden, where she is currently writing about tattooing, convention centers, and forms of adornment. Her poetry and criticism appear in dirt child, fields magazine, pan-pan press, and Pen + Brush In Print. Her audio pieces have aired on NPR, KQED, the City Arts & Lectures podcast, and The Kitchen Sisters Present podcast. She also makes clothes and objects like clothes, but not quite.