Researchers Discover Insomniac Birds are the Sexiest Birds

We’ve been awake since May
and already, August threads
its feathers into us, asking
to see just one shut eye.
We find melatonin pills
sprinkled in the hallway,
crushed on the kitchen counter
next to suspicious straws
and smelling of our mouths.
Of course we ignore any call
for sleep - our bodies accustomed
to moon milk and dimly lit back porches.
In the shower, your back spreads
over my feet a sexy shadow-wing
or I am hallucinating again
and keep finding you
on television screens, written
into crumbled grocery lists,
hiding in the wallpaper.
And night never comes.
We’ve forgotten what it tastes like
in the dark with beer
fumbling for a flashlight
and we make love sometimes
on the carpet just to know
clouds of the floor.
The bed is a hologram,
a memory of some other
dreamy couple.




*(title taken from a Jezebel article)




Mary Stone Dockery is the author of Mythology of Touch, Blink Finch, and Aching Buttons. She is the co-founding editor of Stone Highway Review, and a reader for Gemini Magazine. Her poetry and prose has appeared or is forthcoming in many fine journals, including Mid-American Review, Gargoyle, South Dakota Review, Midwestern Gothic, Arts & Letters, and others. She currently lives and writes in St. Joseph, MO.