It’s August again.
I still haven’t found
my own blue rooster
to replicate for the world.

When will I learn
private jokes
make the worst poems?
Or is it public ones?

I get them
mixed up. If
everyone gets it,
even if everyone thinks

it’s funny, how
can we tell
with these masks
returning to our faces?

If I ask one more,
will my true chicken emerge—

more pullet than hen.
That doesn’t count.
Have I, or have I not, wanted
to end one with the word “cock”?