Two people in costume hold hands as they move in a circle.
you just wanted to go to the hop. the school spent the whole year fundraising for the new gym floor. charles brannock swears your socks, the ones capped by gray toes, could measure the space to industry standard. you tilt your head, scaling in tatami mats, thumbs, slow blinks. the harmonic chorus is everyone rushing delta kappa epsilon. it is a year of empty rooms and hard-soled shoes. you begged for months; now you sleep alone, but the drawers are not all yours. it is the year igor comes home from the mines a father. they almost name him robin–american at last. my great grandfather buries his son in the backyard under cleveland soil, using the company-issued pickaxe–american at last. ria paints a miner, lets me hang it in my house. i am so worried about the sunlight bleaching the cherry frame that i put it where light never reaches. the kin of miners are known for this. shoeless, you make room. haunts of the local supermarket cheekto-cheek, visible only in thermal infrared. the night tastes like paper streamers and the surprise of knowing exactly where to put our hands. the ghost hunter swears he smells shampoo-covered chlorine and clothing starch. the emf meter is buzzing. “untitled (billboard of an empty bed)” is a portrait of us. it feels like a lifetime.
it’s all poking out the candle in the middle of all that dust they didn’t know how good I was at taboo picked me last scored five points maybe it was because i was too nervous to drink called poison ivy “batman’s sexy oponent” eddie is trying to take up space snapping the only queer in the room no one is trying to kiss thirty candles too old for camp another snap fans clacking in the club we are looking at each other wondering who let all these straight people choose the music but happy birthday is one we can rally around.
i am teaching children to wash the dead whale to leave flowers unpicked for the neighbors they may never meet roko’s basilisk is sun bellied cottonmouth my sister thought was a vine recoiling from our touch we are alarmed it can swim still having “lake placid” dreams i can blame my father for you flick your tail last summer i become afraid of turtle pond brown bagged beers and atvs i am certain something is grabbing my foot dead man’s float is staying home to circling helicopters right all along i am afraid of the bottom i cannot see patty chang wades towards the largest, deadest thing our children pat, pat the ground “there, there” “good dog.”
The sun sets at four now and gold and shadow drift down the trees in that order. You would say it is nature’s version of flashing. I imagine nature with their tits out. They are smoking, too, but only because they bummed a cigarette not because they actually brought any with them here. Here which is just them. Strange they cannot go anywhere but themselves but me neither.
they call a ghost this thin a shade did you find me in the club? i am of hallways postered in hedonism, spent bingo cards, a PrEP advertisement in which one person touches another’s abdomen and smiles but we know they are day players and that everyone went home alone ask me if i am at peace fortune wheeled reeling fluorescent flicker floor sticky with vodka cranberry feedback on karaoke microphone you will never go back there i am not so sure i hold my own hand to my own abdomen i go home alone.
coat checks are never not in style east is a good way to go big boxes with bright lights extra space storages so much storage boxes for your boxes need more space? space outer space a void of space rows with lights bring your own lock we have tons of space lock up outer space mining helium 3 not enough space your slice of outer space all for $59.99 the men are running up and down the field and he has gray in his beard look how super casual what’s the wifi password? does anyone need more rice? i think i have dissociated the kid can’t have anything spicy they throw me slices of meat it’s sticking to the grill this one is belly something new or something familiar? the game is in greenbay everyone tapping their apple watches raw meat looks a lot like glass amorphous solids are kind of sexy they photoshop two heads on me in the family photo they keep calling me sister weird sister’s second head “gremlins” is a christmas movie i sit up straighter they sit down to pee to watch tiktok cooked? cooked. yards of years new plates the mens arms are red chicken skin enterprise of conversation the word twerk i’m all cuticle there’s an oil for that onion volcano (anne carson) this is where red bought that baked bread sourdough butter jam not grape lucretia everything memes i’m sitting alone scraping the bowl no alcohol the code to the restroom is 421 to let in only women it is different from the other one so i have to ask specifically on the way the hand truck is beautiful.
Anticipating gulping highway medians, I tell the god of bottom bunks I need another sip of water. I’d prefer to count the syllables of your name on fingers in my mouth, slipping down the throat. You hand the glass up. On the dock, the child wears his shoes Antichrist-style. Hannah and I are both grateful that the life vest has a handle. Everything is a threat of falling. None of us know the depth. We are in endless retreat. Hannah says she hasn’t seen the eagle, but heard something large hunting. None of us see fish. The raptors are hungry. August claims their mother is delicious. I watch the handle. I’m last to leave. I kick the glass I keep by the bedside over—a Frankenthaler pour. Somewhere in Provincetown, Clement is wrapped up in sheets and low tide. We anticipate your absence, settle, marry another, make a mess on the living room floor. No one hands us the glass. I go to bed dry.
I am over fifty axes stacked, a heave over the shoulder, a backstroke expert (29 flat), never sure how I feel until there’s a vanishing point. Chlorinated, Marina walks the wall’s shadow while Ulay drowns the lap counter. The plywood dripping in the back of the truck? Welted in right cuts from the table saw. We wear Diane Simpson like sturdiness. Although I have sworn it off, superabundance is 1000 rabbits feet tethered to the loop of your jeans–a blue leak a sign of sharpness. Korakrit says indigo and denim have a weak bond; the washer’s intermission is just a conscious uncoupling. We sleep naked. Lister never wore pants.
whatever anomie we are trying to make love through scrubbing dishes with the NPR body count a many-toothed comb, buxom bristled i am uncertain of your complaining aware the pot for the umbrella tree is a ridiculous anchor to a home too close to in-laws you scratched the floor i am splitting two dogs barking devocalized, declawed, clipped, shaved taxidermy posed for rare dinner guests “it’s almost over” “i want to be better” so in a few weeks, it’s over and i’m better. in a few more it’ll be over and i’ll be better. she’s in hawaii in lieu of getting a divorce i am being born at queen’s hospital two decades away no baby. just the planter.
the hand at the back of my head a prayer and as you fuck my face i am momentarily orange julius fresh promise squeezed out cold touching your hand through thin paper you have to yank the straw up and down food court hand job before the hopeful slurp (fait accompli).
tonguing shell off tourist priced oysters an abundance of pigeons and every dog in a stroller you shove some new girlfriend through the phone silverware clatter so loud it sounded like it was inside the house i do roll-ups in my dreams you buy gifts for our mothers the mating pigeons said sure.
galschiriz // palliass (battle axe) (back) you are now living in the consequence of putting the thing behind you
nightsea crossing 90 days in one of us has to stand
“good luck making
g work for no one.”
the chicken prowls the video bar no one told him it was a global pandemic and the daddies roost at home. an out-of-towner (me too, i think), he asks me how people eat chicken wings here. fork or fingers? fingers. the bad pop echoes. i’m lucky to take home two hundred and he will leave alone after a couple hopeful hours. i’m not sure how either of us got here anyway but i know no one is coming to find us i still don’t give a fuck about lady gaga and i know i’m going to die here aged out by thirty figuring heraclitus there will be another kid–perpetual youth pale fountain in the corner of the gay club i’m praying you want to pack the whole car tonight and chase whatever vague premonition means warmer weather i get a flat on the way home sit on the porch talking shit about our coworker (the one who fucked his dog) i wait for a daybreak–we don’t go anywhere at all.
it was “surrender dorothy” before “fag rag” charlie is burning bills and a bible the queen from the porno palace stamping who knew how close we stood to the dignity committee grateful for bryant and guilty.
we are made and remade the whole drive back to boston. chris kraus with amor vincit omnia riding passenger reconsidering minetta lane windows: salcedo healing where wheels catch the lucky penny rubbed raw; dice theory a subtlety concluding in a sudden flood of sweetness joan and i know better (the donner party) hands in pockets. behind back. i step away––something slips into the water. i peel ticks from my hip, the nape of the neck.
The category is wildness. Halberstam is talking about “Rite of Spring” (Stravinksy, Nijinsky, and Diaghilev were all fucking) and I am reconsidering “My Meteorite” as bacchanal. Is my wet mouth a direct response–a certain impulse at a right angle or Satie’s gruff snort–to distance (approximately 550 miles)? My tan gives it away. Franck is still waiting at twilight, calling for his death; he grows more certain. I am all for testing the tongue or unsimulated sex scenes. I have a penchant for spinning. I insist you spin out of every scene. It looks almost ridiculous. Ultimately it is planetary. You spin away. Growing closer to Hal, growing closer to Mother, growing closer. I call out for you: Michel, Michel. Retrograde is just the illusion that something is moving backwards. We both close our eyes and tilt at an axis.
a matter of timing and inseam “A Little Death” – the maggots at my midsection this soft fur’s mottled molding the peach lasts longer than expected dear dick, your breath is playing pretend while frank walks the frick with vincent and fleischmann fucks the bourgeois all cells and hands and red lighting i take what is given–– hold it all in my throat––
“it is only the body, it will soon be over.” i cannot help but think you’re coming through that door with a bouquet of lilies and i will refill that vase my mother got with water until the molds wins out it’s your birthday and you’re jumping on the bed always corrupting, corrupting the pink gummed wedge of chastity when will you become they and they become you ring finger thinned by promises i had to work past my knuckle here in the gallery plank and the boy with the frog not realizing they are both charles ray smacking me across both cheeks i pool on the floor silicone shaped circle close passage debris sticks.
you promised to pray for me walking me to the bathroom at midnight you knew my hemlock heart i am putting out cookies at your graduation fanged, furred, muzzled none of my clothes smell like me washing time off of me before you send me to the blood bank you don’t want me to see you with your teeth out: no photos please memory of me giles corey into some european ground my eyes are closed my feet are buried is standing still being overtaken when nothing is coming? i am longing for headlights the next fox that crosses my path has a limp our three-legged race is up i am longing for headlights i look for you between my teeth you’ve been here before but it’s my first time i keep expecting someone to order a drink from me i am not sure what to do with my hands without a serving tray the lights garnished by all this haze familiar as circles of confusion or looking at you through elements this syllogism that looks like my shoulder– lean here. i gum the air you didn’t notice but i buried my teeth under our porch years ago you’re driving fast enough to feel it: you have no god anymore.
It’s not until four in the morning that I wake up sick from the shock. Overboard. The guardrail too thin. They say they will try to recover the body. My lover holds me, closes my eyes, makes me name the ink (youth, frivolity, coercion). Tiresias’ seven years is your hand trailing my body–the wrath of a minor god. The swans follow you, Augur. I am led blindly. I slice my finger doing dishes–the one that you say is “left for the dogs” when we hold hands. Must I trade sides now? You sleep South. I take up much of the bed sprawled prime meridian. The gentle tapping on my ribcage. A spontaneous symmetry breaking. I decenter everything. When I linger, I linger as low hanging fog trailing through houses–never the ones you like with the bold trim. I am best preserved in cooler and darker places. An amorphous solid of childhood windows or stained glass (see Station 6: Veronica wipes Jesus’ face). “Ghosts are forever,” some writer says at the bonfire. The smoke gets in our eyes. I am tapping you four times on the hip to let me cry alone. You tell me all quarks become up and down in the end–stabilizing. Let’s forget determinism, pray to a heavier god; I think you call it umami (strange). White. Spinning. Becoming zero. Put the precious bits in the middle. We are governed by waving lines. I am afraid you’ll fall off the table. All spacetime and no history: tell everyone “it feels like I’ve known them forever.” Barthes squints his eyes and names this a Feynman diagram, “Did you really see all those shooting stars?” I was summoned by your seance after all. I am looking for a betrayal of mirrors and lamplight. I am tired; to be here is to do it all over again, but I forgive you.
“i forgive you.” “you’re disgusting.” “go away.” “come here.”
Heckling Baldessari, you cover your face with my hand: I am Botts’ dots again. What you don’t know: the long drive home, the hollow reckoning. Placing the plastic figurines in the berns, I was destroying superabundance. I have such little saliva to place between us. We take the measurements, the exact dimensions to fill it with bare bulbs and hornworms. I promise you a median and build it with silence. This? This is not the place. Witness the population drop from 60,000 to 3,000. The passing lane is closest–I wear it like my Sunday best. I only know how to say I love you with my tongue out.
you standing in the living room your stained white undershirt strumming your pubic hair like an air guitar john dunne john done i’m dreaming of texas and your parents want us to take over the mortgage a layer cake of multi-family home there’s too much dust in my ears left over from a war we swear to leave this place come spring puccini in the bedroom sexy for a week straight a full tank of gas will i stand up straighter? $300 a week and some under the table it rains every day i still slouch john done john dunne.
phobia: L-shaped hallways i am checking around corners listening for leaks
It comes in gradients: my glasses smudged, the cheap metal of my nose ring shaped by goodbyes. We steal our way to Boston; time thieves talking of tall grass. The welts on our ankles, a penance to the same gods. Not sure what we are looking for: eyes closed and arms out, waving wildly. Careful. Keep your palm flat. I am Keith Collins’ molar mouth, toothbrush Galoup, and finally the mirrored club speaks back. The Morse code of can light! The kiss of moving heads! Haunted by Sontag, I cannot take your picture in the reckless light of the window. I take Mychal’s instead. He calls me a lesbian over dinner after the waitor doesn’t want to serve me a negroni. Here’s to having the longest neck on the East Coast and still not seeing over the booth, the pew, the backseat of the cab. It’s a sipping drink. Mark Doty doesn’t know shit about Wellfleet oysters or me stretched across you on the bed. Giles Corey mouthed, I paint the countertop in his Dutch lemon. I question the word “labial” for a coin purse, but I’m full of quarters and the laundry is clean. “Begrudgingly bodied,” I say. Pelvic alignment a Goldsworthy serpent sliding into the water. We speak in the hieroglyphs of train hoppers and stowaways. How do we tell wave interference from a strong connection? It’s all constant forgiveness just passing through. I call it nostalgia but it’s really [blank]. At the edge of chaos is maximized evolution: I say I love you too fast. Kauffman laughs when I cum twice. I’m crossing the Styx almost everyday. What dock did you linger at? I’m minting newlywed blues bayside, pressing lips against bows. You’re tied to the mast. We both want to see something we fear. Send our corpses to the body farm once we’re used up from all this looking. Ask your god google: why does this feel like home and who are you anyway? Straight white teeth perfect for ascending the staircase. Straight white piers concerned about the trees. I stuck my knee through the banister–too self-reflexive to do anything but shrug. Lighting your cigarette felt like arms laden with groceries, missing a step down. Not sure what people eat: missed calls and worried friends. Tehching Hsieh punched enough timecards for us. Jesus couldn’t even get a fucking minute in Gethsemane. I want to hold you all night long. You love chance and I’ve got string theory. Tell me how I can fit my arms around it all. You have a wider wingspan. You, lover of the na-na-na chorus. Words placed perfectly are a hand on the sternum, a rapping behind the ear. Put the whole thing in my mouth. I sheath my teeth. Hyannis golf courses pad the drive. Every bus stops short. The girl who gets off with the faerie wings must be kin. It takes me an hour extra to reach my empty flat. The napkins are still folded on the table. The cattails don’t talk back like they used to. Even the ocean held us. “I don’t have to see you to touch you.”
the chasm of vantablack: kapoor’s last nickel spinning vortex at the mall. i present you with divnick’s double dog dare: a deeper orbit of whatever you have left to give.
i
am
rot
einstein is still on the beach counting tell me you’ve named my fingertips after words you’re searching for: anomia, anomia, anomia, anomia, anomia, anomia, anomia, anomia, anomia, anomia fitting my whole name in your mouth please cover my foot with yours a three-legged race back to your pasadena home how much do you love me, john? but you must know that i saw you on minetta lane the twin disks speaking in whirring and blinks is a judas kiss we are contemplating the grammar of animacy and jack doesn’t have a dog i ship your computer charger and think: “more human than human.” lingchi makes me wet when done with the right book. despite the drought, it resembles nabokov’s white fountain my back is to you now. we are looking at the same form and that is enough.
I say it to the cat, “this would be easier if they were here.” To say it out loud is to make real word and picture. More human than human. I listen to a lecture where they call poetry invisible software. I wonder if Lain knew all along to do the work by herself and if, in constructing a family, she blinked when her mother insisted on the power of blood. I do the work by myself. You bear witness to the Arizona sky and I move the box from one place to another and I move the box from one place to another and I move the box. We both have mastery over standing still. We both spend time contemplating whether the silence is a room. Some places are not for sleeping. Like “Splitting.” Like “Ghost.” The typo claims we are both looking for tall white fountains. What we are building is the tunnel of love and you are five years old sitting in the middle. I have to crawl over you to pass.
I wake up wanting to tell you about Laurie Anderson and machine learning. That she’s created a way to hold her lover’s language a decade after his death. That their voices live side-by-side and then together. At first they were so precious to her, these words licked onto the screen by the death evading miracle of Lou Reed. She saved them. Lou Reed in terabytes. Lou Reed in Kelvin. Lou Reed in Cloud Storage. You’re on the road, pushing for Texas and camping along the way; I am Rudnick’s pangram, a New Jew not knowing how to work the zipper of any of the twelve tents. I’ve decided this is a digital experience that augments my physical experience. I am wandering through the desert. The font sings just like me.
It was an intermezzo after all And the pianist is refusing to bow until the movement is done.
drove the riverway so slow my boyhood slipped away the spurs fell off my sneakers i couldn’t shift to fifth we were both waiting for a better cavalier hoping for a higher ground you tell me to repent but i’m not so sure my hair goes gray—the kitten in the new york apartment made monument (colorado circa 2011) i must have had more color: best seen in blue light or red the kids ride beacon street backwards badu crooning she can make me put my phone down a terror of blue bikes, a terror of twenties i wasn’t lying in the rain i can tell by your walk you fell in love too young they fogged the glass before we had a chance to light
I am sitting across from you in Orange. My blue turtlenecked heart runs his hand through the cat’s fur. We expect a pur amidst all this softness except we are sitting in metal chairs and looking at metal things. I am breaking bread in the way I know how. A terror of moths scratch against the fluorescents. The brick always wet with green tinged vacancy. Hold your ear to the door. Tighter and tighter until the grain kisses your face. Breathe in mildew. Breathe in sour. The rustling inside the bathroom sounds like fucking. Your eyes are getting heavy. You cannot feel your fingertips. There is a tightness and fullness and emptiness in your chest. You feel your heartbeat between your ribs. You cannot feel your heartbeat. You hear the air shoved from your lungs and it is a stranger to you.
Over lunch, I am not sure what to do with my hands without a serving tray. I keep expecting someone to order a drink from me. I watch you place everything sweet inside you. I have a passing thought on what it would be like to be a strawberry.
The wind is doing that thing, tossing around the leaves. The fox with a limp runs our three-legged race.
we were born with tails. at an annual convention probably in iowa the doctors who cut them off display creatureness bottled held up in one-handed triumphant handwriting sprawled open-legged on white paper tape: alexandria 1996 honolulu 1992 candled side-by-side pink glow in black waters clinking jars collapsing time-space.
“Bergk says the history of a text is like a long caress.” lingua ignota blotting red from my eyes as herakles closes in here an expectant cryptography of knees carson and currie are in iceland they’re close to one volcano but it’s only one and it’s miles away to be a god winking back with both eyes means you’ve used a payphone at least once when you look out the window call me about some cloud shuddering across language a long thin reflecting pool without any coins (you used them all on the payphone) proemium to nothing but zweisamkeit in the screening room they are all looking at your life these shadows you cast on the wall they’re going to stay in berlin they’re looking for a job they’re going to be the person walking by the tenement houses where my kin paled white and kerchiefed and kiev’ed peck at surnames that fell off in the shuffle the volcano smoke waves, “bona to vada your dolly old eek!” everything blooms dial tone red but it’s only one and it’s miles away will you cleft my head in two?
lift your hips just a little higher––fucking a stylite isn’t easy.
the rain is netted from the ocean tonight an endless tinsel curtain outside my window everyone is in texas they are wearing blue jeans and white tees even the moon is bigger there there is a certain kind of thunder before everything falls down i cannot tell it from the stamping boots.
jesus! chris kraus is so wet the certain angle of sunlight makes her glisten the woman who lives above you comes onto you at the toast she collects objects you examine your own objectness and shrug email her at 3 AM some bullshit about barthes ask if she’s seen a shark “no.” she offers you squid and sounds of braiding hair you fuck yourself thinking of your lover and the shining skin of her prey.
barthes is yelling at the cockpit: “an artist should avoid falling in love with another artist.” the smoke follows us i am repeating myself the smoke follows us i am doing the same things “one can step into the same river twice.” does that make heraclitus twice wrong? i am cracking all my knuckles: touching one hand with the other touching one hand with the other the pilot says at this height it looks like clouds are racing past you don’t know if you’re upside down amidst a lush green forest is a sign staked into the ground reading: “i’m doing the same things other people do, but for different reasons.” i’ll call you in half a century and ask you again.
you can’t see the mountains through a window well, but the clouds sit low. i pull away too quickly. want a touch that makes me sick to my stomach. scored. to exorcise a hungry ghost is to feed it (exotic). i fuck myself. whatever bad spirit you named me, i am human. the joke is the metonym. i am ha ha ha–ing. talk to me like i am a dog. pat pat. whistle. salivating on the rug. the new variant is omicron. i imagine we buy a farm and just forget everyone but each other. this is fantasy the 1980s type where i am working the field and everyone is played by jodie foster. i wipe my dirty hands on my apron bring a hand up to shade my eyes. oh! it’s you in the distance! returning from war with a knapsack on your shoulder. the very good dog is also played by jodie foster.
it is not a breakup it is a split the truth is that no one wants to hear about your divorce sticking my finger in cardboard boxes the smell of packing tape sliver, sliver, spliced silver tonguing my bit culled cardboard crush felt behind the eyes edges are wet folding over “bless this mess” the entryway to a home–any home crumbs to lead us here (a posteriori) how to dissolve them under my tongue and say nothing the loyalty of a vow of silence sorting socks for a dime a pair counting up just enough for gas on the way to a place that we don’t share.
this bed is a metonym and i was living an entire life that was a symbol of a life and sleeping next to you was being sarajevo’s romeo and juliet or lovers of valdaro i was never just tired my body was a synecdoche which made me tired but my tired was an erotic doubt i couldn’t get it up which is an erotic doubt we don’t fuck anymore which is an erotic doubt don’t worry! everyone here is sapiosexual and this rot is hyman bloom’s cadaver expected to compose with my fingers rotting off the trick is to remember it is not the composition itself but what it represents.
lonely boi phenomenology the power is down the fridge pants out the bad blood fucking yourself on an empty stomach i stretch my skin over my longing is this a text or a seance? we call it ecstasy when it makes the windows sound weak.
tiny backpacked sunset riding lover of rock pigeons arca plays in the background as you–– screensaver.
the horror of absorbing your own photon!
you love everything russell hates déjà vu reminded you reminding you will remind you is this distance sufficient? hunching to the lecture hall citing bergson’s aficionados my queer body’s arrival time menopausal flux vigorous touching heat wave dry mouth sex hormone thermometry entomological pin directly in pulled out and inserted again keeping keeps kept flâneur arched back on the balcony how are we both here and there? call me at thirty-five properly primed.
my dreams of you: we show people the best places to jump to their deaths. everything is swollen: “go to the bathroom, georden.” we out the bad priest. katie says, “you only think about yourself. of course you’re going to be great.” there’s a dog in our house. woof and skitter. you brush kierkegaard’s hair. you’re not bald anymore. i always knew the sky would fall maritime rules here lifts her skirts cardboard cutout clouds fold easy when it rains remember when i sang you abba and you sang every song middle school danced hands on shoulders on shoulders karaoke was the closest smile press against me in the hallway fluorescent lit lip smack i like the way you scurry the ladder give me the sky, anaximenes it is all done before i know it soggy but bodied. finally.
Driving the mountains of Colorado, the highways are dappled with runaway truck ramps. The grade, steep and unruly. An unwelcome interruption to the silver snake winding to tourist towns of Frisco and Silverthorne, the visitors with their skis strapped to sedans–no snow chains in sight. It is almost as if we are to ignore them as we drive: that is not a parachute, it is a mountain. When I pull up to the barn, a group of riders sits chatting by the open door. The child stares at me. I am busy trying to charm the farm dogs caught between fear and enthusiasm so I can prep the camera. The kid steps closer. I notice it is quiet. Everyone is watching. Here I am. The threat of failed brakes, of icy roads, of falling rock. My shaved head. Does it alarm you that I am a thing between you all, oscillating wildly and uncontrollably as you tack the horse? It stamps its feet and we look at each other in a way only wild things recognizing each other can. You see us nod and fear it because you cannot strap it to your sedan and take it to Breckenridge. You must watch it, appalled, sliding out of control up the incline and hoping it doesn’t tip. Are you more scared because I am un-namable or that my desire is? That I am an un-namable thing or that I fuck in an un-namable way? Tell me. I am a thing that fucks as if volleying up a grade so steep the Rockies disappear.
bomb pop blockbuster sachiko kobayashi when things look like war we say zeitgeist whose extreme private eros– the sort of lover who guides my head to the pillow– takes the word “daddy” for a walk.
my daddy tastes like no sorries.
our shibboleth: sighs blood on the sleeves of every sweatshirt something tight slipping off the wrist it’s called ribbing, the cab driving so fast you lose a twenty out the window your portrait: the speedometer for all this shifting geography you are getting to know the neighborhood.
josip belušic in the sixth grade pulls a rolling backpack behind him listens to the wheels spin the light-up kind the whirring blue and red kind the kind that makes you contemplate skating rinks and RPM the kind your kin shoved on stomping toddlers to tide them over before we had cell phones josip belušic ignores the kids with their satchels and messenger bags, gets top marks, decides you, too, will contemplate your rolling backpack and be punished for enjoying it too much.
somewhere in hawaii you are saving your marriage you aren’t married but it is a matter of will your mother’s will in which she stipulated family reunions all of my money was in a trust but it was very little and i paid off my debts (for the most part) alex says i should have gone on vacation but one of us is wearing the shortest shorts so i don’t have to be all leg and golden hairs as the money runs out.
the dilating cervix the cup so thin the water tastes of paper we are all waiting for you to pour some light is it really so leto in here? i’m flinging my body around every crisis i turn maternal measure chaos in potential gestation might as well be a beaker thank god i’m not a black alpine salamander parthenogenesis has a sudden appeal i’m not sure i want to die for anyone and that makes me a narcissist i am battle axe blade in another’s hilt in another’s hilt stretching holy to the ceiling for a column of serving trays you need about 1000 to reach that height which is the difference between war-cry and “corner”
i buy 232 cards, a wheel, so many more chances to get it right to yell out to some chaos god BINGO you can check the card dart your eyes from ball to number i got it right this time i got it right this time 232 square miles inexplicably duned my father’s teeth have not yet rotted out he is freshly bald the baby is still baby i am not mother BINGO! BINGO! i am waving the winning card but it is very hot and you have been ill all day we make it back to the car and head home.
A miniature Frank Lloyd Wright, an impossibly large and tender beef jerky. It cracks in slow motion, with its head jerking back and forth on the verge of being dislodged. The band picks up speed, aching to hear each convulsion. There is too much tambourine for my taste so it must not be Frank. It’s the lesser Lloyd Wright, John, spreading his Lincoln Logs on the playmat. Is that what fits through the dick hole?
preparing graves for your arrival the girl at the bar wiggling towards my newness i have spades to spare.
i am not sure the aisles i run into a colleague i am holding peanut butter i clean the whole apartment i wash every dish i wash the sheets i empty the closet i fold the clothes even the folded ones again i attend a dinner instead of making anything i try the fried chicken the director thinks i’m a vegan i slice into salmon i am grateful to have food and not have to do another dish i steal a roll of toilet paper i get home i develop opinions on the paper backdrops in commercials i can barely pet the cat i consider that what i am writing has no distance i know it will be bad it is nice to be bad at something that has nothing to do with you i will try again tomorrow.
wittgenstein and pinsent lean over schubert and kiss you’re writing your own tractatus i’m making everyone a ghost an indulgence of furniture–specific and austere my whistle trailing your pennied knuckles tapping us into history three letters a day man-made mist sitting on the sofa holding your foot to the damper pedal please play me that song i like so much
anna magdalena bach’s open hand composes a tombeau in all this lost time all my secrets falling out of my mouth we should have gotten married.
black phillip or some other devil gazing prey the pupils of monolith, catacombs we promise to be buried side-by-side you show me sarajevo’s romeo and juliet claim throwing rocks is a form of worship i shake the gravel from my shoe.
we are at the storage place separating two years of things i call knick knacks until you glare at me i guess you have health insurance now which means you get to ride the handcart like a surfboard you stop the elevator “you’re not a woman?” we were descending in metal the circled number lit by touch i like the haptic in that i stroke and the number is aroused gets warm, glows yellow attentive nipples needing a descriptor “make one up, queerly? what’s something that fighting outweighs the benefits of a surrender” “when the man yells ‘faggot’ from the bus-top, apologizing by the time you’re close enough to see the whites of his eyes.” i am able to witness shame without shame i am able to press these buttons “no. i’m not a woman.” there’s something that happens to me a certain failure of libido teleology is pointless the door slides open.
you know you will not see them again you are caught somewhere between grief and relief you feel an untouchable shame.
a billet-doux to 10 Farquhar street to ruining dinners and to slinking into a sadness so deep we became strangers.
bass so high the change jingles
the picket fence graveyard in vermont slinging shadows like a sundial.
i am the first to notice my shoe is untied you ask me for money i am the only one who bends down to tie it i do not look back up.
whiteread casts the echo of 10 farquhar street i sleep where the bed was when we first met– up against the wall, too many quilts– lit by agnès holding her hand up to the camera covering the rond in early frost everyone hold your breath! orlando’s teleology is bobbing for apples a loose tooth spots blood in the barrel even norwegian kings were prone to drowning ten and tasting of copper and birthday cake sit with me palm to palm cement swallowing the sound of a countdown i find a lucky penny on the bathroom floor gleaner’s stoop, the sun catches the patina of my head.
Jarman says, “It is not possible to see the shapes of things in the dark.” But you’re two sleeps away and the failing light equalizes highway medians and cement. I’m calling it the orifice trilogy: “when the they/them cums so hard,” “rug-burn at machine nightclub,” and “ode to being below.” The rhythm of footfall and rasp tells me I don’t want to be Diane anymore. Unlace my boots, kiss my bruised knees. I’m quieter than we both think. We are all waiting for you. The gulls switch feet in the parking lot. The shopping carts aligned and untouched. I pray that the laundry dries. We talk of change, offer it dinner, and a clean towel.
I am not sure what to do and so I do nothing.
driving the fens (can’t believe you came here) i gotta close one eye to look at the nauman underpass the color of dirty flavin or cassils’ two hundred days or karen finley smashed against the glass i can never tell which one is the tobin it looks a lot like the puente de la mujer take my words, morvern callar: the blue line means we are underwater. it’s human inclination to figure my body into the gap spatial dynamic of my particular set of teeth the unfortunate rhythm of palm to finger every red light is your mouth requiring a certain level of worship.
a parenthetical of mattresses placing words between bed slats shaky kneed: what? the descent of someone who dances after being asked–– the babiest corner.
you don’t know a hole like this michael heizer doomsday grab a smithson shard this time cut me in the shape you like glimmer glitter globetrotting i sparkle from even this great distance winking auf wiedersehen the carl craig is gone and with it the orifices of light that let our teeth clack in the darkness before some alien descent.
“I mean you no harm” tattooed on knuckles emergency weapon left on maggie’s doorstep.
burn incense walk clockwise open windows count back the days from fourteen begin again start with thales and water anaximenes coughs condensed condolences cardboard clouds get soggy.
You are skimming the pond. The baby’s hair drifts seaweed. The baby’s hair is clumps of pluff mud. You are watching the baby from the shore. I trust you.
1001 nacht wish i could love a banister grass widowed my frauengeschichten: i only have 12% of my eggs left just tell me “no matter what” pointing at arrington and strachey “you look just like them” the bathtub flooding the airbnb thankful for home insurance for thick carpeting for nonperishables onsra is the list of names i give away.
three holes for dust
“Opposites of White,” Roni Horn, 2006-2007 i like how eileen myles talks a bad habit of an open window and the heater on “Line Describing a Cone,” Anthony McCall, 1973 i’m waving my arms, fogging the room a timecard seeped with light
we are mad at einstein for bergson’s exile but it is the only equation here john cage is laughing in numbers you ask me to keep score tattooed tally of silent days i hold my own hand at a distance how to proceed with exquisite care? even the void fluctuates it just looks like kissing we are examining for overlap but I forgot to notice that the majority is the whimpering structure of nothingness coming together apart go away come here loving the ghost with my smartphone pinky la durée touches everything and itself.
you drove me to your house the other you was inside i was always outside there was only one of me.
my bush leaves you speechless (exodus 3:2) we nurture the overgrowth keep track of fire danger today: green like our tunnel surrendering to the spit in your palm.
syncing until we both cum you do not know god like i know god i am the witch of endor on some endless road trip unable to stop delivering trivia i thought i could drive to the end of the world i mean i called upon samuel after all why is it these constant reroutes took me somewhere edgeless is the internet the only good place for a good fuck where no one spills their guts? i am wondering if anyone remembers what went on the floppy disc and what particular gray flesh color they were hex number cadaver hued like a body farm sally mann plopping herself in the rushes hyman bloom made everything feel a lot more floral but the beached whale is dead from chronic entanglement which is not what particle
i am not afraid of the machine of badlands of batteries to make do with this bandwidth pelvis processing processing processing lithium lovers stowed away at takeoff. touching the spinning wheel with my tongue. lunar mining helium 3 i am afraid of sharp things moon dust the locked door how many marriages until you leave the window cracked being distanced means craving longer wavelengths to see the universe requires a certain silence.
there’s nothing more disturbing than a gloved hand turning it over means another side selling out tonguing fownes brothers & co. all seven of them the needle is sharp they’re afraid i’ll lose the magic awl smooth metal wood i prefer it bent i bought you chisels i take your photo naked moan into the rectangle.
the man at the dmv has lost his hearing aid we are all stooping leering at the industrial gray carpets give us something to listen close they call our number there is no way the pathos can survive here someone must put it in the light on weekends it is not this woman i don’t think because i fucked up the address she insists they have to mail the car title instead we leave empty handed the man is patting his pockets
two fans face each other.
tv that looks like art
i am not sure if the stitch in my side is covid or some other uncertainty that gravely wraps around up a dum dum lollipop taste of dollar stores or michael’s going out of business! everything 50% off! even the smell of melted plastic i shove the swab up wheel it around aisle aisle aisle squeaky wheel
pinky promise digital marriage
blush the red virgin knows little weighted tongues outliers shuffle perimeter we are down to the last loaf speech patterns smack umbrella plastic shudder drooling stigmata of all the deaths this one? there are places i haven’t been to look out windows Iago’s mirror / cellphone search engine suggests locomotive screeching through monument cipher-texts: length we build our houses on stilts we fight fires to see an empty bucket is bad luck.
Georden West Aliza Shvarts, 2022 I know you’re going to have tons of sex in Germany. And I am suddenly surrounded by 25-year-olds. I spend a lot of time thinking about killing myself. I spend some time thinking about the show I have coming up which makes me think about killing myself. I start to think maybe the piece for the show is just that I don’t kill myself. Then I wonder if that’s weak. Wouldn’t killing myself make more of an impression? It’s 2021 though and Chris Burden is out. I think it’ll be figuration if it references death of the body and there are too many painters here.
“she didn’t speak anything but english but she knew a lot of phrases” i am walking down the street when i see myself in thirty years my aunt lisa here on holiday owns a home next to my apartment the two almost jews. everyone kissing on the lips. endless lipstick removal a small business for lipstick removal a corporate effort for lipstick removal. “partnered?” samuel foote isn’t famous but everyone knows sam i was always threatening to take off my leg and hit you with it “at least i don’t starve myself” i guess is a truth that makes you fuller than me. a shande.
google maps 2011 if i go back the mimosa tree is still there you’re relapsing in the alley they’ll put you on the plane still tripping
i love you, alice b. toklas everyone is stealing the paintings while you are on a walk in leggings so tight your swinging flat ass white walled 27 rue de fleurus my brother didn’t understand your appeal (heibai wuchang) death by strangulation did you gooooooooood letting it all hang out sneaky link measuring distance in feet thirty-nine years temperature controlled fits in easyspace extra storage 5 x 7 if you stack things right not like this like this null and void in this life all air a genius broke my heart.
i listen to fred moten he mentions epidermal subcutaneous i feel validated to order the plastic and the non-plastic the both plastic my digital bulge my big blue bubble my upper face snapchat my huge dick my choke me sext the queer opaque digging through the recycling bin.
the reopen all windows from last session makes me wet between abjection and limit-experience is you and mmmmmmm i want you to want to fuck me more than you want peanut butter compensated in pretty words or crypto my vpn looks like harry dodge’s bedsheets i tell my sister i wish i had her small tits she is so mad she leaves the city the entire city of new york and i was left with my two huge breasts pushing them around in a shopping cart carting them around nari ward call krzysztof wodiczko i’ll take a variant 5 or whatever you’ve got left i need a vehicle to get me to the threesome with eileen myles this isn’t a sex poem this is a dildo a new fellow a non fellow i’m watching you touch yourself at 3am i love how hard you get no matter whose name i say.
today is bjork’s little city making my lover beg call me daddy say please until pleased i’m learning how to take a hit near the little hole where the snake pokes out i hated tobasco until i tried it on my clit and my mother’s wobbly eggs god stop looking for sturdiness walk the curb all the way home to the garage where i hide my weed i need you to get clean so i can stay dirty but you’ve gotta prove to everyone that you don’t know nothing i showed you all the prairie above the tree line tell me how big i am all nothing all air cybernetic means hurry up nowhere fast.
we open on many kisses many kisses mostly on the cheek both cheeks you’re raising your hand in camera flashes cat-eyed wonder of the world music mouthing me red giving the mosquitos a bit of me for a moment our technologies say we are fucking for 90 seconds on average their dildo is a perfect fit curved where necessary taking what it needs.
time is the thing in the left hand corner of your phone it’s the forty five minutes it took the evergreen gum in your pocket to touch my brother’s baptism gown viridian your running shorts are ruined the netting i should have checked the pockets
i hate didacticism i expect it everyone around the corners of the basement ready to shout ooga booga
response to agitense doing pull-ups on flag arms they call the females things that sound like unsheathing ann freedman or glorifina rosales venus of willendorf foreshortening young communists and other ramblers
standing bitch heroes swaying butch heroes here’s to the dildo here’s to catching frogs here’s to deaths by drowning by hanging by fire here’s to the lovers here’s to the marriage certificates authentic and manifested through pure will one-named naked lives wasted truth is i was your soldier gutter gutted guts unmarked.
speaking to the half shadows a nail in the wall when a train roars by.
in the quiet moments i feel you most six locked doors you begged me to come spend 20 minutes talking to the dj i’m not sure how to sway anymore machine learning lists for people who love ppl with depression twenty things ten things i learned from my partner’s depression i wipe my ass with divorced socks under moving heads.
when richard left grief becomes boring if i turn right here i’d go straight home i hear the second floor single mother two children a dog these are my final months crossing the bridge i ran across summer 2019 blighted bleak coping is turning left baboons seeking political asylum nice guys don’t finish last.
cherry creek mall i’m sitting by the fountain fingertipping marble that is really just teleportation the money ran out i wish my body was something for people to throw coins at i am trying to bowl the sixteen years between me and jude you joke: but i’m asexual now we spend my last twenty on crane machines i’m gagging on the rain calcium buildup means we moved once you dig a hole that looks back the pain is bottomless.
when i look down into the rockies i want to think it wasn’t a bad day altitude sick over pancakes san luis valley too hot you told me the coffee shop ladies were nice too polite to vomit in their toilet before purchasing a coffee i liked that you do the right thing when we break up your venmo request just says “payback.”
that bitch in the front who doesn’t know the choreography transfigures grief into lamentation i have to touch my passport three times turn the car around check the stove is off pilot light is by the window so they could sit together.
the ugliest ugly how to perfect the tender brood the curve in my spine used to leaning on you i have a limp now i speak slower always whispering blocked number is just cell tower emancipation you hated everyone but me we couldn’t unicorn the friend i took dancing i got them a lemoncello shot i saw z drink it once you say you’re vegan now but i don’t know what that has to do with all these lemons $18,000 less than your uncle’s truck higheredjobs and zillow planning the new life here here here animorphing my way down orchard street one legged mina bird broth.
mutually assured destruction billboards for shots slots and more oversized loads “the parade of exes in provincetown” the license plates are changing over i forget i’m queer until i meet their eyes at rest stops i spend a lot of time unclenching my ass my asshole one of the last conversations someone shouted from the parade “i touched your shit” happy you owned someone’s shit washing your ass all the fucking time sitting down on the chair knock-off duchamp and it’s art because you chose to sit there bill cunningham is so asexual it makes me feel like maybe my libido is okay running on dunkin i’m running across america i’m running on dunkin single and thirty and backseat full of cats gertrude stein’s challenge of orthography drive carefully in the part of the county where no flag is less than fifty feet i’m sleeping amongst headlights again we are all missing your birthday i’m not one for a dickprint my pants are just too big eileen myles loves their dog so much i think jack would have a conniption but without you the passenger seat seems ripe for a dog the trucks that look like christmas volleying in night so black i’m surprised when they pass over if i hung with these sunoco ladies long enough i wonder if they’d think a freight sounded like halloween’s scariest zoom is just astral projecting
with poorer connection the haps interplanetary cut piece gas food lodging nebraska is giving every 18 wheeler a blow job so fucking good that they can’t help but keel over ecstatic highway medians the summer of 69 on every radio station you better turn that blizzard upside down that way i know it’s the real deal and look! the mountains! always knowing which way is west north east south but always starting with west remembering 16 in early sundown no peak to drive my way home covering hickeys with backtracked miles the best sleep i get in months is that a truckstop somewhere in illinois the car is still running the cats in the backseat drinking water i’m dizzy with missing you and altitude i can’t stop saying expensive interiority expensive interiority denver is the sort of city with a little history and a lot of hot tubs my single headlight is winking two hours from where i grew up we’re chewing cud we don’t even know how to look up except to move to something new to chew they put a neon cross on the rockies and i cannot help but call bullshit two hours from where i grew up from where ted haggard fucked that prostitute in the ass as he screamed i’d go to hell and nothing wrong with being fucked in the ass i mean i could enjoy it but i’m not putting a cross on the mountains about it desire through association.
achilles heel party where i dress up as my spam folder refresh buttons VPNs