Matthew Guenette

winter 2007

Sestina Aguilera

Christina Aguilera has a blue
tongue. That scream you hear when you drop her in
boiling water is actually just steam
escaping her shell. She invented the word
agnostic in 1869 because she was tired
of being called an atheist
by Robert Browning and Stephané Mallarmé.
To wit: she is the only pop singer who, at room
temperature, acts as a liquid. The odds of her being injured
by a crowbar are somewhere around 13%, yet in
coal mines that percentage rises to a whopping 75. The word
Aguilera actually means sleeps and dreams
with one eye open, while the word itself tastes like cream,
which tastes like beetles, which tastes
like apples, which tastes like worms,
which, interestingly enough, tastes like fried bacon. You
cannot fold Christina Aguilera in half more than 7 times, yet in
Iceland it is against the law to keep her as a fire
arm. Ditto Siberia and in a Boeing 747. When her wires
kink and cannot be straightened by a team
of skeptics, this is called dog leg, which she sings beautifully of in
a number of her songs, including Dirty, I Got Trouble,
Slow Down Baby, What a Girl Wants, The Way You
Talk To Me, as well as in her cover version of Word
To Your Mother by Sir Vanilla Ice.
Aguilera is also the longest single syllable word
in English, and the only one that rotates on its side
and counterclockwise. As the youngest
Pope ever, (11 years old), she instituted one slot machine
per every eight citizens in Vegas.
Contrary to popular rumor, she keeps her heart in
her head like a shrimp or a pregnant goldfish. In
the Animal Crackers cookie zoo she appears
as 15 different animal shapes, including a herd
of red blood cells, a lighting bolt, and the Nobel Peace Prize.
It was said one day she trapped the wind like a tired
man. The HOPE radio station in Sweden continually beams
her lyrics into outer space. A bylaw in Utah
bans her from unionizing or having sex with a man in
a moving ambulance. Or so it would seem on her
coat of arms, which reads: In the beginning was the word…
give me your tired, your poor, your huddled Aguileras yearning to be free



Fiddling


The fat chance eats twice of everything
put on its plate, feeding the little boy
inside who is hungry to please his condition.
Much of what happens
won't make sense right away, or ever,
like suddenly cancer, or being in the dark
for the first time
with someone who wants you, their hand
slowly searching your leg.
Once when I raced to the Pump 'N Pay
for condoms, the cashier, smiling,
said, would you like beer with that?
Another important lesson is the art
of coming undone. Another the love story,
the love suffering, the love trying hard
not to forget, pantoumed, turned miserable
and apologizing, getting the silent treatment,
saying screw you—
these are all the same story,
the same loss announcing itself
again and again, in the telling, as grace.

 

Bio:

Matthew Guenette lives in Madison, WI.  His chapbook, Sudden Anthem, was published in 2006 by Ropewalk Press.  His poems have appeared recently in Pindledeboz, Southern Indiana Review, and Passages North.

Frivolity, 2006, oil on canvas by Theresa Pfarr