To a Maple (audio only)
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writing on the bruised
body and seeing into the
bruise’s locked backyard, not
psychoanalyzing the incursion
but appreciating its scissory
up and down
———————
2017
sell me a clip-on
bow-tie or a mock
fringe chapeau worn on
the collarbone—a
new style of “shoulder
hat,” a cape to
protect your shoulders
from rain and chill and
to prevent the wearer
from sliding (like
Mickey Mantle) into
a third gender
__________
now I’ve
reached the “clinker” zone
of perforated opportunities
__________
—perforated appurtenances
____________
but then Edith Piaf
suddenly thrilled me
__________
a newly
discovered Venezuela, a
view—
____________
a rendre compte,
a liar on the corn2014
Into the unisex nursery's toilet my undershirt falls. I fish it out and find my face on a marquee. Florida: in sneakers, I construct Delft shelves to store scrawled diagnoses. I enter an observation tank (rightly considered tragic, irreversible) to greet the hatchetfaced magician whose dead mother says welcome back, implying I've been fired. Through Skinner Box glass he watches me play with dildos, blades. Entranced by unending orgasm, I dismiss his tendency to find amelioration in experience's fluctuating shallows.
2010