7.14 / December 2012
The Wearied Cords
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Henry Smith. John Fleet. Their names meant little to my mother and so she would comingle them, if she even bothered to call them anything. Her apathy was echoed in the maps they made. My home has been recorded in English as, variously, Nacotchtank, Nacothtant, Nacostine, Anacostine, [...]
AN ETHNOGRAPHY OF L.IPSUM
My Birthday Suit
It’s a risky business, dressing myself.
Naked, I am least exposed.
I was built from the outside in,
swaddled early in soft, fibrous love
grafted onto my raw bones in tight stitches,
so I could bear myself upright.
Now, it’s difficult.
Every morning, I find my seams have gaped.
When I walk from my bed to the toilet,
the [...]
Eastward
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As you open the apartment building’s cracked glass door for the first time in sixteen
days, unbutton the top button of your shirt. That’s better. You looked like a religious girl with your shirt closed up to your neck that way. One more button now. Show the people [...]
Equus
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During sex, a herd of spavined horses
runs through my body and out
my mouth. You just roister, lover,
never see the andalusians
on the sheets, palominos
vaulting the bedstead. You don’t
hear their hooves cantering
arrhythmia inside me,
mistake their sick whinnies for breathing
at orgasm, the froth from their mouths
for my own rabid dampness, [...]
The Frog
Yep, the frog was definitely on the thorn. Squirming. Right there, just by the other shore, alongside a Mountain Dew bottle and some mossy stones. Who wants to see such a thing? Oh, what a doomed frog. Dangling basically by its own skin. I said, Frog, try not to [...]
Daddy’s Teeth
At night, I wake up, and Daddy’s in the bathroom with a hanger in his mouth. Momma stands beside him, puts a hand on his cheek, his head, prays for healing, but he bats her hand away, tells her she’s hurting him more. I watch Daddy pull, eyes closed, spit, [...]
Pool
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Early autumn, I go on the narrow path that extends from my backyard between two apartment houses to the fence surrounding the vacant lot. The dandelions haven’t died yet, but more of their yellow heads have grown gray and fleecy, so the path is grimmer than in [...]
Surname NASA
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Grandpa had a chin cut from solar flare,
his arms felled comet tail,
his mouth full of Hubble lens teeth.
Nothing broke him, not the bricklaying
or bread crumbs, not a love wanting to see the size
of its shadow. He held all the quiet of night,
all it’s dark in the [...]
Two Poems
The Head Is Shorn
The head is shorn and bristling
and once you look at the neat row
of staples cinching skin closed
above the hairline, it is hard to look
away: the metal teeth glint like
a zipper sewn shut and the skin
holds no pucker on either side
of the seam: this is fine upholstery,
you think, [...]
Two Poems
A Streak of Light
In the shower, you wash my back
and at the same time you sing
the Spider-Man theme song.
The soap foams, webs
across me. From our window
we see the kaleidoscopic lights
of the hotel sign.
They are singing in bursts.
And the day has decided
to end itself in rain.
Water on us, water outdoors,
one dry [...]