Dandi Meng

what comes between me and my calvins

it turns out pant hangers come only come in sets of 2

or 200 and in either case cost around $6.50 plus

tax online, some demon math I want no part of, and yet

i must hang my pants in the daily way and want

for nothing but the two-legged taxonomies nipping at our heels.

who could have known how i would regret not trying on those

inscrutable jeans that said FUCK / YOU / BABY right on the ass-crack

in thick cursive and almost the same color as the rest of the covered ass,

which i later found out retailed for $400 at least, new

and unsat in, the quotient of revenue and units

sold, or material cost plus labor cost plus overhead plus

some loopy marginalia in the great centerfold.

you can’t love a woman by her objects alone and so

the course is set: i shan’t be loved, not without my babypants

You Tell Me

I am an agent of change

? Can grab power like a bunch of tulips

? Divide and divide until I become undetectable

? Turn sharp in an arterial way

? my way

? Couldn’t I fragment

? enough to be marked right

? I lost a finger down the drain

? I killed my private eye again

? No one to watch me wrestle with the pit of my stomach or the roof of my mouth

? No one

? Watching me

? and I couldn’t surrender

? the space between my eyes and let a warning be nailed there

? I can paste my face on a billboard but

? If I gave myself the name of a secret saint

? would it rise like hot air

?

Dandi lives in Los Angeles.