In Deutschland, I am Dodo

in Deutschland, I am dodo
a tottering dodo, I am chicken nugget,
waddling up to smokers outside cafes
pointing, squawking, laying golden turds
of phrase: “is this the scarf of you?”
or, “butter this make bread better?”

but I’ve taken to an audio program;
I swing dumbbells and shout the word for horseshoe crab
like Der Führer receiving his daily butt-injection
of amphetamines and unblinking thoughts of conquest –

until I’m on a treadmill surrounded
by a pillowy, headphone-smothered silence
and yell how my wife snores like a walrus
or how I’m captain in my own bathtub

and am forced to pad through these woods,
asking squirrels if sheep shrink when it rains,
hoping one day I’ll become ein Mann.

The Last and Worst of the Peter Pans

I am the last and worst of the Peter Pans,
acting, always acting,
to an audience of four, or five. Someone’s
ankle’s always in the aisle protruding, tattooed
with Kali, or Krishna, or the Bodhi tree,
and I forget my lines. The lost boys
forget they’re lost. A crocodile
tears in half, alarm clock shrieking “Friday,
got to get down on Friday,” and even God
checks Instagram.

But God, the way you ask me “where I live,”
dress mid-thigh and periwinkle, and “whether I’d take you,”
I feel like Lawrence Olivier in New York;
I feel like the goddamn Dauphin of France,
and when you grab my hand and leap offstage,
I have to. I have to follow you,
cause fuck it, Wendy, there’s nothing second-rate,
nothing second-rate at all about you.

And in some supply closet, we kiss like we’ve never kissed
before, bodies meeting bodies, boxes meeting air,
everything involved convinced it can fly.
You’re looking in my looking, and oh,
dig right here and plant me, roll me
in gauze and sequin, tell them that I lived,
tell them I’m serious, cause shit,
you don’t know yet, do you?

Our future has gasoline and a road
without any mosquitoes.
It’s a wonderful play, a wonderful adaption,
you are, you really are.
But I’ve always been a VHS player
terrified of rewinding, and rewatching,
and unwinding, and ah don’t worry your head, Wendy darling,
just ditch the Jolly Roger
and get the hell out of Never Land
before I hit eject.

R.W. Plym is a poet and author from Virginia Beach. His work has appeared in Azure, Ghost City Review, and Vita Brevis. He currently lives near D.C., where he’s working on a novel.