Kim Triedman I WANT TO BE PABLO NERUDA — the tongue of my mind slipping over fishheads, pyres burning blue and loose-limbed men pressing into soft things the color of pie. I want the death-word to have a capital D; bodies swollen and purpled with sex; thin boys with sharp knives. I want gargoyles and flatware, flesh slick and deep as murky ponds, and I want the shiver that follows, lightly. I know— wish hard enough and walls come down: skies weep, birds bleat out nasty songs, and leaves turn like wayward children, brown to green. There is an itch on my back, way up where I can‘t scratch it; I want something he has—a cure, glittered— I want his twelve-inch wand. I want the star at the top to be rusted and barbed, sharp enough to draw black blood.
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