Dream Pizza Skyscraper

Susan L. Lin

[ boxes ] [ brown ] [ paper ] [ boxes ]
/ flattened /  body tangled
in a deflated hot-air balloon dress.
] flaps open [  into
half-eaten wayward octopus legs.
mold me, they say. carve me. bake me.
make me a cephalopod obscured by an inky cloud.
my mother’s finger right through the center: a diamond ring!
 
these hollow tree stumps have hole-punch eyes:  
jack-o-lantern mouths don’t quite smile.
my trypophobic face reflected on a silver cowbell  
cheese grater, dairy strings escaping every pore.
Polaroids of buffalo wings inside Styrofoam take-out containers  
pile up on the mantel.
mold me, they say. carve me. break me.
make me a prodigious hoarder with too much space  
to call home. build me a dream pizza skyscraper.
I promise not to  
separate  
like land mass in a glass-bowl water world.

Susan L. Lin recently completed her MFA in Writing at California College of the Arts, where she spent her days photographing toy dinosaurs and eating free pie. Her novella Goodbye to the Ocean was a semi-finalist in the 2012 Gold Line Press chapbook competition. Her short prose recently appeared or is forthcoming in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Ghost Town, Midway Journal, MadHat Annual, and Gravel.