HEAD IN A HAND BASKET

When I get it
in the mail, priority
delivery, I’m expecting
the buy-one-get-one-free
panty offer. Box bigger
than I was expecting but
what do I know of shipping
panties across the country.
And when I open it
I’m not expecting my
ex’s head, swaddled
in bubble wrap, Styrofoam
peanuts littering the floor—why
would I be expecting his head?—
I just hold it in my hands a minute
or two and set it on the table.
What is this? I ask my cat.
She knows that face too.
But she’s hungry and she’s
a cat so she’s not worried
about an invoice or a return
address or how I’m going
to explain this to anyone.
I feed her. And I start
talking to him. What?
He doesn’t have anything
to say now. I wonder
if I should call his sister;
it’s definitely his head.

You would think I’d know
what to do with my ex’s head.
The same way I ought to know
what to do with my mother’s head
or that jackass who let his little
dachshund shit in my yard earlier.
I might bowl his bald head down the street.
But I don’t even know what I’d do
for sure with my mother’s head.
I think I’d like to shrink it and
wear it like a ring. But my ex?
I feel sort of bad just throwing it out
but I don’t really want to keep it
around. If I plant it in the backyard,
not bury it, plant it near the pumpkins,
I wonder if they’ll look like him.
I’m wishing it were October, not
August, I could just leave the head
on my front step with a bowl of candy:
Snickers and Kit-Kats and Gummi Worms.
Some kid dressed as Spiderman might
steal it and then, then I would be free
of this face, I know, I loved, staring at me.

 

—Emari DiGiorgio