Literalisms

Literalisms

Your fly’s unzipped,
by which I mean

your small winged insect
has peeled apart
down the center of its thorax
like a novelty coin purse
filled with bug innards.

Cat got your tongue?
by which I mean

were you watching
your feline friend
bathe itself when,
suddenly, you tasted
cat fur, and when
you looked inside
its fanged maw
you discovered
your own tongue,
wet and
sensate?

Pull yourself together,
by which I mean,

if you and your clone
find your other clone
trapped in some quicksand
and begging for your help
you must, if you wish to survive,
toss yourself a rope
and work with yourself
to extract yourself.

It happens once in a blue moon,
by which I mean

if you travel out into space,
if you scout the galaxy
and eventually find
an azure sphere
orbiting a strange
and unknowable planet,
if you land on that
cerulean orb
and begin digging
into its surface,
displacing alien sediment
one shovelful at a time,
until you find another tunnel
dug by some ancient engineer
or by a long-gone adventurer,
if you follow this tunnel
to where it meets others,
joining a network
of patchwork passages
traversing the interior
of this foreign satellite,
if you spend the rest of your life
mapping out these roads,
until you have covered
every inch of them,
it will have only happened
once.

It’s raining cats and dogs,
by which I mean

to provide
an accurate
weather report
for my pets;
it is a duty,
and a privilege.