The Pontification Factory and Its Siblings

Wayne Koestenbaum

paintings can be anthologies


try on a wedding dress


Buñuel dictated a memoir


liquid pooling beneath the cathedral


desuetude of the almost empty glass


more apricots please for Paul Bunyan and his lying cousin

puncturing the newspaper at its already caved-in omphalos

sweat’s repetitiveness

Gruyère attic and carrot windmill


stricture scratches on the chimney


timpani window shattered by horn-player’s lesbian father

taxonomies of the uninformed bridal party


when she is dimpled by circumstance


“trust-fund baby” they called her obelisk


pacing into the witchcraft area


sensate soles on knotted roots


obeying Cain to get rid of some karma


forfeiting the rowboat


shrugging away your right to star in the mystery play

erasing the veined hands because they’re plagiarists

even if the Marshall Plan danced a rigaudon


pass around cigars to celebrate a new toilet


excavate a new toilet if you must verify


not the toilet you expect from kingdom come


the arrangement was satisfactory she concluded after a long nap