Zooey Poem by Rhys Owens

When she sings,
Like a warm salt
Of frost that seldom falls;
A pepper-hot shaker,
Young in the oldie caper
I profligate-
Ly adhere to;
In drunken dances,
Beyond thin shades of accustomed nights.

In the crude winter, —
I never bought her Christmas record.
Though heathen devotion, for
Latter saints:
I find to be the candy corn
Of her all hallowed songs.

And autumn,
Crisp as her unadulterated youth inspires.
I wanted to make it that the drinking was a solution
They had righteously disclaimed.

I didn't want it to be sad.
Like her early parts so often are.
In the singing; in the lively dancing,
My spritely muse enhanced:
—When I think such as her have to die,
My dying isn't as hard.

But you don't have to die, Zooey.
You might wince a celebrated quirk,
But girl—. It's sent.
Your angelic message from the stars.
—I'm drunk.
Please don't say that's all there is of love.

She says it the way I say it, secretly to myself.
In her annunciations, my southern stars are spelled:
Sweet chariot, sweet chair—ee—ut!
And much more than that, in her own words,
I chant—


The country-blues, remotely enchanted.
From her distant well, —
We can't pail…

O Zooey Deschanel,
I too have an androgynous name,
But you don't know it…
As, literally, you are the singer:
—And I am but a dance.