Origami for Adults

People who’ve seen relatives die by fire, stand
to the right of this line. People who’ve imagined large,
drug-taking siblings, crouch down by their feet and warm
your hands. People who offer syllogistic explanations
for plain brown acts, play musical minds to the tune
of any anthem. People who delay sobbing to answer
the telephone, people who voluntarily live in Nashville,
people who cheat by memorizing the eye chart at the DMV,
march down the main street of television wearing
your tongues on your sleeves. People who’ve said everything
necessary in one passionate round of naked defilement,
roam anywhere, like lucky ghosts, ingesting all of the whiteness
of lies, but none of the calories. People who do
what their fathers did, people who don’t believe in death,
people who never think for a minute about stepping
out of your skins, join hands. We’re going to play
Pass the Broom. People who want to be heroes, lie down
as flat as roads. People for whom a Presto log
is a harbinger of desire, people whose mouths have dried up
and healed over like blisters, people who’ve jumped
off bridges, ecstatic, only to be rescued by stubborn
fishermen, inhabit the chandeliers and drool down
on the rest of us with Christian pity. All together now:
Try not to conciliate. Try to stay inside
your own county lines.