Michaela Gabriel poem with possibilities and uncertain outcome (a multiple choice poem) — for arlene ang this morning, the sky is a succession of clouds/birds/blue tiles. she sleeps, doll's face hidden behind dreams/pink cloth/a bucket, half full, one-quarter empty, the rest indecisive like her. there are things she will not talk about: the mailman, a thumb testing the suppleness of a peach, the magnetism of roundabouts/red lights/sharp corners in dull suburbia. i start my browser, imagine her bare foot on the gas pedal/cooker/works, but never those hands with their tendency to stray/strike/straddle gaps. i click link after link in search of her, like gretel following a sugar trail. what i find is this: long drops, stifled moans in the arms of a man named digby/nigel/napoleon, secret adventures involving g-strings/mail/spot-fondling. she snickers in her sleep; she knows i'm watching, knows i want to be the one who drives her battered car/to distraction/into a cliché of a sunset. i send thirteen messages, call her angel/arsenic/arachne, do not mention the word love even once, nor allude to folded clothes/ businesses/rose petals down south; this is a test. if she doesn't notice, i will start peppering her days with shortcuts/deflate the muse of subtle innuendo/steal her frog obsession in the night.

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