June 1st

Here's the premise:
Like in every reality TV show,
We switch bodies.
You stitch my skin around yourself
and build a fat, sleeping-bag worm
That looks like I'm inside.
You'll make the same faces,
and the volleyball team will wonder

If I still carry my keys on the right,
Or eat your pork n' beans and Guinness,
Know how to make a highway or,
Have taught my body (your giftwrap),
How to ravel up a sweater,
If I wake up at noon,
Who did that?

The CBC will interview us
"Where did you get this idea?"
Use "poignant" and we'll act like
We're friends,
We're blood.

Wait. Here's the premise:
You will take only my skin.
Stitch it around yourself and stretch
it like a suit
And it will sag and cover up
and bind itself to your
tendons and ligaments,
congealing like spaghetti.

Like in every reality TV show,
You will try to give it back,
Because it's not the prize you wanted.

I will figure out what it is;
That thing that you have wrong.
And walk around skinless
Until you give me yours
It's gotta be cold by now, but you can't
Keep it.
Not if we want this to work
Like we planned.
What will we tell the CBC
When they ask about our book launch?

We will conclude that we have
Become our own children;
Absurd conglomerations of our traits -- biased and ungenetic.
And pry off our skins
Like cleansing masks,
Scraping off the bits that stuck
With Emory boards.

In ten to fifteen years
We could arrange to meet again
By someone else's design.
He is a biologist at Concordia, and he will
tell us
In a room with a one-way mirror
Like when we appeared on television
He will tell us
"How well you know each other's bodies."