Five Minute Agoraphobic Holidays Poem by Rachel Loden

Whose bread, buttered on the side of the angels,

falls from a great height? So you wait
to take the temperature of your enslavement:

is it slow-growing, like a virus,
or magnanimous and complete?
Your interlocutors
are generous, the little stretching rack is cute,

and all grown over, like an English cottage,
with tiny, exhibitionistic roses.

Will they open wide enough for you?
This is a song about paralysis,

despite your sweet mouth running all that rivulet

of chatter, despite the fan dance
with the missing lampshade bobbing on your head,

the children and their panic-stricken laughter.