HOW TO FOLD A FITTED SHEET

Jesu Christi! It’s only a fitted sheet, it came folded

in the package – this isn’t witchcraft, but anything larger

than a double (and even then it’s no picnic)

seems an hour’s Laocoön from the line, and a queen-

or king-size is to wrestle something part kraken, part tsunami.

Thus I plunge into this billowing ocean of white

as yet untrammelled, a Leander, taking corners like a boxer,

arms outstretched in contrapposto crucifixion.

A Sestina is an easier thing not to be whelmed by, a metaphor

for panic, pulling into shape in six minutes, resting

on the seventh before a second try

as the whole thing maliciously puckers in like a prolapse.

It’s like being trapped under ice,

knowing that you’re drowning, not knowing which way is up.

There is a method, but it has been lost,

this origami, this God-like tesseract of space-time.

A sextant is needed, a horizon line, to set a course

true, bringing together east and west, north and south

into a cool, smooth mass of polyester cotton, an in-folding

of white matériel like the making of a pavlova,

or else just fall face-down on the back of Lohengrin’s swan

and ride it into the night to an Earthly Paradise

where such modern conveniences

are unknown.