Ideal Situation
Lina Ramona Vitkauskas
at bankruptcy court they said,
“speak into the microphone clearly,”
thin Gong Show contraption-
scent of lawyers’ musky lips
caressing the chrome rim cap-
housed the wire mesh
of sound particles, my voice
captured like a pearl at the end
at the end of the outlet,
into the wall
and where, between
the fiberglass insulation,
fusing with cobwebs
and molded, crumbling drywall,
would my voice go then?
these bytes of my larynx.
long, acrylic fingernails laced
with rhinestones at the tips.
burgundy smeared lips curled
into a cringe when I arrive
at the courthouse.
“where have you lived?”
blue-jean clad legs
in the other room
leaning over to her husband’s
tattered nubs.
reel-to-reel Watergate,
inquisitor to conspirator,
suddenly surrounded-
the same wood-paneling
and dank smell of hip huggers
on a summer afternoon, the part
in his hair momentous with intent-
the night I was born.
“do you have any assets?”
I remember, I said, glaze over my purple-blues,
I said, examining the girl my feet
popping bubble-wrap with clear determination
to deflate every inflated morsel of air. I said,
I know your kind.
“I have plenty.”
