THE EVERYONE DRESS

*

Here is the castle
But occupying is for dirt
where dogs eat heads
And copper dresses hold
The piteous cash
Secrets on top our shape
Goes clo-ver cof-fin
As if knowing the caretaker
Fainter and fake mavens
Wants peach dresses on
The ground where everyone bent
Once was ground
And corner birth the rottie
To keep living without moving
Its blocks and gold has an idea
Unfolding in towards
Alleys or playing
Away from the eyes
The view eyes can’t get in
Sticks parallel to parallel

*

Archangel swinging forth like reading
Text how it is now
And holding wood
Real injuries there are children
Having fantasies
Without doors there are doorframes
We call this grounding
But you notice small windows
Suctioned in the alley’s idea
Held back by the clothed
And bent arms of anyone
Everything was once unlike
So we like it better
Human hoofs beneath
The Everyone Dress
But pointy roofs
A beam for building or blunt
Women up there looking
Clover heads deflated square
Glowing hair
It is what they do good for
Where there is not even darkness
Good for them

*

Master with the red book I am biting
Two nearly dead version of your
Whatever you are reading
Your ear to look like kissing the part
Into something too whimsical
To fail of you that fails the succulent
A gradient for your skirt hem
Both black and the mustard colored
Black floral cactus coming toward your dress
The god dress the cowl in which
My perch instructions me
Hands shielding and displaying red
You are fighting off the crowd
It does not concern though I see
With a maimed leg I think
You looking off or listening hard
Backdrop is just someone’s tongue
I hate you bind our clovers
Preening torso like the skies sky
Coverless aquatic underside
You mind where no one lives
Not even you

Ellen Boyette received her MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop where she was a Teaching Writing Fellow and undergraduate instructor in literature and poetry. She has been the recipient of prizes from the Academy of American Poets, Black Mountain College, and Random House Publishing. Her first full length collection, LOCAL VIRGIN OF IMPRESSION, was published in the fall of 2025 with Dead Mall Press. You can find her work in Poetry Daily, The Columbia Review, jubilat, The Bennington Review, Prelude, and elsewhere.