Morning Mantra//Al Russell

I am the grass.
I’m lying on the grass.
I’m a nude sleepwalk through my life, face
white as a piss-stained sheet.
My mother used Exact-o knives to whittle
big potatoes into stamps,
blocks of Linoleum into busts
of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
There.
I said it.

I am the lobster who grew two claws
out of one wrist joint and they cut it off
and put it in the Peabody Essex Museum
in Salem, Massachusetts.
I am Iggy Pop waving his genitals
or Jello Biafra waving his manuscripts
(manifestos)
around on a stage.
I am the sun,

I am a planet-
size hole, a light

in people’s periphery that won’t dim
or die, I’m this tree
with its weird angles
shaped by hailstones,
flagrant-smelling winds,
and the rain with its sounds, with its sounds.
I am that block of Linoleum, but I will not become a bust of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. I will
become
this Raggedy Ann Doll of a tree. It’s beautiful, and it’s spring and I love you and that is itself a
poem and I
don’t need to write it.

Al Russell (they) is a NC-based pansexual nonbinary tankie educator parent dog lover who reads too many books, watches too many movies, and smokes too many cigs. Previous poetry collections include Children of the Anxious City and Lookinglasshouse, both available from Vegetarian Alcoholic Press.