Annie Przypyszny

SOLILOQUY FROM INSIDE THE COCOON

It’s nice, 
                                    being soup.

Serene, spa-warm, 
all velvet        
                                    and hum.

Like being hooked
                                    to the Pleasure Machine,

which everyone says
they wouldn’t choose
                                    over reality,
                                    even though….

I feel   
                                    good. I didn’t
always—                     once
I was fat
and slow
with a fake snake-face
that fooled only
the stupidest birds.

Then I was stripped
                                    of solidity, 
a huge
                                    and perfect loss.

I sink
into the gel      of myself, 
                         pellucid
as a planet so vaporous
no astronomer can taint it
with a name. 

I won’t acknowledge
                                    the return

to the terse
violence of form,
                                    the endless assault
of noise and stench 
and colors.

I won’t imagine
                                    my life smuggled back
into body:

the antennae
and their stopless     sensations,
the two gross wings 
that bully me

                                    into flight.


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