What men do in the morning.

He walks into a bathroom
with eyes wrapped in glasses
made of garter snakes. Bulbs
hung naked from bronze sockets
with no string to pull.

Their light was brown like the ring
of filth around the toilet. He runs
an index finger across his teeth,
the feeling of
blue fish belly when it’s pulled
out of a lake.

A tube of toothpaste is rolled up
like a wad of money and he
squirts a pea-sized circle onto
the bristles. The shower radio
is on an AM news station and the
reporter talks in gasps
about an eclipse that nobody saw.

He removes his beard with
a half-dozen smooth strokes.
There is a line of pastel islands
blotted on a long rectangle of
white wallpaper. Covered in
mouth grime, he puts the toothbrush
into a porcelain penguin’s flipper
and looked at his face. His
cheeks looked like they were
covered in bee stings.