Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt called “Junk Drawer Song” is an interesting juxtaposition of thoughts on a song and the stuff in the junk drawer.

The April PAD Challenge is a “Get (blank)” title poem.

Over at the A to Z Challenge they linked to a bunch of random generators in hopes to inspire. My Janus word for today is incorporate (adjective) 1) having a body, having been incorporated; 2) having no body; incorporeal

Get Out of that Confined Mind

The drawer forms the junk incorporate
like that yellow-shagged square
that contained my pre-teen change-up
a lone D battery as solo as a wall-flower
hoping to show her power some day
under that battery, a collection of inkblots
half-hiding the instruction manual
for the Air Hawk Pro as if they
are the gateway to the subconscious–

where hips, hips and boobs
I don’t yet have, shaved armpits,
a whisper of stubble
she’s on the empty dance floor
the club on the first, small, odd
cruise ship, a trip flush
with firsts. She had it,
the seductive movement I didn’t
the easy knowledge of her body,
knowing everyone was watching
her and breathing it in
through her arms and hands
lifted above her head, lifted
toward the short ceiling

–I’ve been wondering where to look
for that manual because I need to check
my tire pressure, there’s an unopened
box of two, unused, multi-eraser
cleaning pads, I leave it there, unused
as if still choosing to keep the stains
like all the sit-ups in front of the antique
mirror behind the closed bedroom door
or the lit floor tiles on the busy dance floor
when I became incorporate and understood
the unhidden meaning my mother feared–

my breath so close, the rhythmic touching
not exactly accidental, though still innocent
One and two, three, four and
two three pause clap clap clap

–so much shoved in this drawer:
two long screws, one short, and a dime
all those unused padded envelopes
meant to hold CDs, my CDs
and the blue, plastic, kidney-shaped
Mayor for my pocket, a yelling voice
of Katrina survival whose batteries
have not yet gone dead
That man needs to yell “I am pissed.”
And I, obviously, don’t hear it
enough, or it creates
its own power

I love that I push those buttons now
and he yells out to the future me
in another state, because contained
doesn’t work for a dancer
who needs to prove her groove