Deformity, Too, Requires Approval (These Days)


I.

(a) Only a room of pink fabric and air conditioner could erase that face from my closed-eye vision.
With eyes wrapped in tissue, fingernail shadows, you touch some part of the sky,

ask me a question.

Ice clinks gay in my glass.


 (b) I am so happy i could assist you in your "artistic process."


 (c) Dancing with
dust glints or a little morphine.
One-legged Russian prostitute
(no verb intended).
"Peace be with you,"
"yes, peace be with you"

(d) Deformity, Too, Requires Approval (These Days)

 (e) The last time I saw your mother she had her fingers
all over Pete's scars. The big gaping one in his inner right arm
where the needle had been removed,
the skin rearranged.

Her eyes big and black next to a bowl
of overripe bananas and garlic papers,
she spoke slowly and hardly
acknowledged that I was in the room.

 (f) Next we record songs in linoleum basement
our field of vision, entire sepia,

a thin veil of film over the
connectivity of aperture.


(g) A faint dance
your wedding ring the only stick shift
part of the conversation.



II.

The numericals grow stale,
Biblical-sounding. (cats mutter, stale)
"you are allowed to speak now,"
"you are not as satanic as I thought"
"but you are still pretty up there"
"as far as satanic things go."

VIII. In the nail salon,
you talk about Southern California.
I don't remember for sure.  
Feet embedded in plastic tub,

your stare can be seen only amidst
the soapy water and the tiny
Asian hands.

Unfortunately the ruminations
for the day have left the body of
the room, once again,
marijuana, or, turning 25?



 

A Simple Lisp
(for M.)

When you climb into my window
chucking your frail frame
over my balcony,
doing something
to my tailbone,
inner ear lobe,
some nerves
between clavicle
and knife of neck. 
and in so doing foretell
lack of—

(a snapped
wishbone:
cynicism prevails again.)

This may seem to be
getting emotional,
but lets get serious
about the jukebox
of the land
and dancing peoples
and a desperate sort-of
unspoken something
that describes all
that has here been
described:

It is only as sad as a snail,     
or the last bit of a roll of toilet
paper. Only as sad
as one-day old sour milk,
or when small things
grow large.


 

 

Dream Pendant


A girl in the rain with a beaded scarf and a cigarette and a tear.
Later her wine will teeter her. More rain. An apostraphe hangs
near her, not quite a grip. Where words were now there are
symbols, the colors of words, the shapes, the smells.

There is a tingling where girl. A tingling where—
girl on bike, I don't even know her name, but
I remember
her.

Odor-lacking, sigh-less,
attention hungry she bows her head
when he touches her necklace and it feels
there.

Another decimal to begin another point in the
story. Somebody help her tuck into.
A blindfold a coldhanded
existentialist. A diner on University.

There is a coming. A shuddering. A shoulder.
A young and shy newlywed walking
in the rain.
 

 

 

Hauser-B.

Even though the furniture won't be the same. The dimension in the apartment may shift based on windows open/ close. The feet may be bigger, smaller.

Even though our cats' hairs may have intertwined some, on each own, or others' bodies. Their eyes may jolt even more.
    That time we ate acid out of your freezer.

Your black eye may pop. Your window shatter. Your telepathy freeze. Your windows, squadron. Even though your manuscript may odyssey. Your title entitle. Your dark circles break, making a splash.

Because time didn't stop for under twenty years.
                Under twenty years, time didn't stop.
Time didn't make it away into that
neanderthal apartment where they kept him.
Time, the neanderthal, didn't break its way,
didn't upset the balance

Time the genesis never did its homework on his back
while he was sleeping

or snared a gun at his destitute feet
that could house rats or coasters.

Time, the enemy never stood outside, on watch,
to protect the normal heir.

Time never woke him.

Time never ceased to call on him less.


 

Descriptions of Flowers


Legs crossed in mess of sunlight through

winter
    window.

Motioning of lips         to say.

A thing   or two            ("a thing   or two")

from the arm rest
        the hole in the plush of your elbow

a scything
    unrest.     You ottoman the apartment.

sweep

    again under ankles  but. Okay     some description

in morse code a tap tap flower

a  pair of
shoes in the front hall. A smear of semen     and,

     light on baby toe.             

Some description

of the way it smells        the texture of shower gel 

 "clean"

some watermarks or the sheets on Sunday.

Friend. with a rainbow in her shoebox
    writes "panic" on  forehead.

Takes   a     picture                       in the mirror             two carafs and a ballpark later

hop the fence and break beer bottles    for fucks sake        to Animal Collective and

        the horseradish lingers all day.


 

 

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