How briefly the body is a story
where everything matters,
even its name.
Read MoreA man outside a café is putting his gloves on slowly, tugging
the leather over his wrist, and he is, perhaps, waiting for me
to put my knife and fork down, to come out from behind
Screw that—I’ve never seen a woman
I couldn’t lick, never a man I couldn’t
hammerlock and stomp into the canvas.
Read MoreYou say there are ashes in the water. I say if you want my new sprinkler system, why don’t you come and take it from my cold, dead hands.
Read Morehere’s a lastingness / of to crease and an ambiguity / of to fold.
Read MoreI read someone stole a frieze from Santa Croce
over the weekend. And given my sense of Florence
or elsewhere is less than impressive, I thought maybe
you and the thief may have passed on the street.
Read MoreI'm tired of being cute. On Tuesday,
I wore nothing but an apron and dismembered
an orange as though it were an oyster
or a man.
Read MoreFingers to keyboard, cyber-minded
when the photo hits your inbox—
Hexagons burnt into wood: a pattern
innately inside the bee, graffiti-ed
by human hands.
Read MoreI asked you not to hurt me
the way history did
Prisms spin in the hardwood floor.
My daughter glides and chops, skate-shod,
Her little girl legs a perfection of knees and narrow thighs.
Read More”I was a ghost in a strawberry field for five years,” he says.
“The ghosts were plentiful, ‘la fruta
del diablo,’ as they called it, also--
faakiha ash-Shaytan.”
Read MoreSoft solid visage, followed by reflection.
If only each cavity knew oblivion.
The eye, preceded mostly by footwork,
waves into pain. The right to feel the lights.
Read MoreEverything served up / on a silver charger. / Even the air conditioning, / even the sink fixtures / hold the peculiar/ inevitability of flawless / design.
Read MoreGive me back to my body—not the same
narratives you write everyday nor wheels on
ends of piano legs, but rather, a momentary
transcendence, or at least system overridden,
before you take a bullet in the back—
Read MoreIf temperature were a way to know the world, then
waning heat, half-heat, these would be names for the body in progress
and not merely words for the time of day. If texture were our
primary experience, we might have ways of calling ourselves
to others.
Read MoreAvoid heavy cottons.
Embrace the blend into a moonless night.
Necessities only: medicine, make-up, moisturizer.
Leave lugging to the muscle.
Read More