turban

adulterous magenta
fidelity wrapped
around sleeping serpent
coiled in ice-creams
bandaged wound
or maybe an altar
dancing god,
the airless secret bound
braided sword
starless sea:
a universe of
growing limbs.

the man moth, i am a moth too.

The Man-Moth

BY ELIZABETH BISHOP

Man-Moth: Newspaper misprint for “mammoth.”
Here, above,
cracks in the buildings are filled with battered moonlight.
The whole shadow of Man is only as big as his hat.
It lies at his feet like a circle for a doll to stand on,
and he makes an inverted pin, the point magnetized to the moon.
He does not see the moon; he observes only her vast properties,
feeling the queer light on his hands, neither warm nor cold,
of a temperature impossible to record in thermometers.

But when the Man-Moth
pays his rare, although occasional, visits to the surface,
the moon looks rather different to him. He emerges
from an opening under the edge of one of the sidewalks
and nervously begins to scale the faces of the buildings.
He thinks the moon is a small hole at the top of the sky,
proving the sky quite useless for protection.
He trembles, but must investigate as high as he can climb.

Up the façades,
his shadow dragging like a photographer’s cloth behind him
he climbs fearfully, thinking that this time he will manage
to push his small head through that round clean opening
and be forced through, as from a tube, in black scrolls on the light.
(Man, standing below him, has no such illusions.)
But what the Man-Moth fears most he must do, although
he fails, of course, and falls back scared but quite unhurt.

Then he returns
to the pale subways of cement he calls his home. He flits,
he flutters, and cannot get aboard the silent trains
fast enough to suit him. The doors close swiftly.
The Man-Moth always seats himself facing the wrong way
and the train starts at once at its full, terrible speed,
without a shift in gears or a gradation of any sort.
He cannot tell the rate at which he travels backwards.

Each night he must
be carried through artificial tunnels and dream recurrent dreams.
Just as the ties recur beneath his train, these underlie
his rushing brain. He does not dare look out the window,
for the third rail, the unbroken draught of poison,
runs there beside him. He regards it as a disease
he has inherited the susceptibility to. He has to keep
his hands in his pockets, as others must wear mufflers.

If you catch him,
hold up a flashlight to his eye. It’s all dark pupil,
an entire night itself, whose haired horizon tightens
as he stares back, and closes up the eye. Then from the lids
one tear, his only possession, like the bee’s sting, slips.
Slyly he palms it, and if you’re not paying attention
he’ll swallow it. However, if you watch, he’ll hand it over,
cool as from underground springs and pure enough to drink.

heisenburg pinball: how words come. (for mom.)

"the more precisely one property is measured, the less precisely the other can be measured."


a pre-boil hiss of bubbles,
thats how its starts, and then the heat causes
colored sand to jump into saint shapes
and fall into belly ground.
vuluptious air fills it like a pocket
making marbles
smooth and perfect
float upward, through pink stomach holes
when it orbits a lung or maybe a heart
until it rolls like a bowling ball
out of the shroud,
on to its metal tongue
and can be tasted there,
can be understood by its circumference,
density, and flavor
around the mouth. could be
blue birds, or tennis shoes.
the gray stained laces flopping like ostrich necks
over the bottom lip.

ode: giraffe

(who remembers the magic of earth?
what order can trample this?)

sweet drag queen lashes,
so blue with glitter,
and the long frenchmans face
with the dripped sap lips
the skinny black newborn
that slips out the mouth and
drinks each leaf

sweet baby nobs
two egg rolls
young alien fawn or raindeer
.

sweet algebra
painted over your cream
like a camel soccer ball
or an austistic savant


sweet knobby stilts
three men tall
tripod stance before
you get to your river glass


sweet silly neck!
three men tall
a taffy horse, you are
a kayak &
you make no sense.

this is the whole reason why i write poetry

status update

friendships is language we should give up


they are no longer ships, because there are no sails.
they are Styrofoam beakers, so I guess
travel is out of the question.


there is no promise
unless its one of convenience.
there is no contact
unless its microwavable


friendships are not for the pizza eaters
or the 9-5ers.
maybe they are for the artists,
but it doesn’t count if its heroine for
the lonely, and
history has evaporated
so there’s no reason to trace ourselves
back

the kenyan author told me a story

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o







You go to boarding school, put on the slate colored nylon shorts. Mud the sounds of a foreign tongue. Meet some friends that listen to you and try their best to empathize. You brush your teeth, sit in rows. Eat things like sandwiches and noodles. You wash your hands, make your bed. Once you get into a fight, and his mouth opens and bleeds. You are relieved that you let yourself feel heat under the skin again.





You go home for summer and home is gone. The village where you threw rocks in the creek, and washed your feet is gone. Even the creek is thin. The homes are ripped open or burnt away. Your door chapped parted mouth reveals the hot black inside; where there is teeth
Or a rug turned over

men i like. (this is not new)

on becoming the body of t. j. m.

I remember blue cement steps white hair bleached sharp like teeth cut into the gums like diamond the pink of your cheek hung brightly fruits. stuff chest, wrapped down like sausage in plastic chubby through little-boy-button-up those inch hands blue-eyed hips depressed under canvas and the warm valley of under arm like chicken breast those torn small shoes in a voice that reminded me of my brothers I didn’t want you to think that that the whole thing made me outtasorts— so I stabbed hard with the needle until shoulder bled, and you went south to the farm to show your parents your puberty. I saw the boy in you because there were little amounts of woman in you you were too carved out to be a woman you were too plain I still wonder what your funnel look like in the woods we used to dance hard in your sailor cap leather shoes and I noticed your knuckles looked different the cursive made by the tubes that looped out of your green shirt like 7-11 straws but filled with yellow-red blood bits was a valentines card you cut your chest out to leave room for hands to press on bone and your mom said “I want to sit next to my girl” at the dinner and we laughed the incisions were sunflowers for a long time and now they are two white crows between your tattooed suspenders you have more tattoos now that you are barechested all the time your hide is browner and harder shrunken over your muscles like plates grass skirting out of your jaw that you shave in the morning on the mud bank that’s where I picture you you came out to the other camp leader and then you were friends that bang chests and take pictures on the River which never tells you who you are when someone can enter you I don’t know what I imagine down there anymore with fish and wheelbarrow the line of sky chest is flatwide and heavy against you & you are with the land now that has a terrain folding away never in and you have left people behind poetry only in your tent and woody forearms stretched out over bramble scarred and cut to tell stories about the men we are wishing still exist.

ode: men.

you represent all men because I have been disappointed so many times










I hate the sourness of the sun now. the look of your chubby hand out for me made my tongue and throat cover in barnacle. I am choking on bitter country. I hate that trust like open clean lung is the signal for fucking. I hate myself for not granting honesty to sweep us into a place we can stand together I am embarrassed—the hardening like city and there is not enough room. . there is no space for telling you that I hate you, without it being a lesson. if you wanted to you could
spoil me.

I wanted it to be supernatural that man and woman can denude their gender like heavy cloth and see themselves in one another like water. nothing on the seafoam specked hardwood except a gentle heap of circumstance (I like the way male body swings and can press out worry into one flat road).

because its funny.

dinner fight machine.






dad cooks glass sweats

I cut summer strawberries that’s all

I’ve never watched him do it

those steaks peppered them with black eggs

mom sets table lace runner

ocean crushed plates cedar and lime

we sit and wait for platter of meat

he forks one drops on brothers plate like continent

crashing from sky like sasquatch footprint

mom instinctively says, “ that’s just sick”

brother gets skinny dad’s face sours

eyes shrink like dried fruit

says “ it’s what?” she’s sorry

but he is already embarrassed and mean

brother tiny holds right head with three fingers.

guilt.

guilt


note.


cross out with thin line first
and then just ink out,



draft


weave of law, dimensions of buildings
with lines thin, scripture porous enough for sprouts




remember


failure
face of the patriarch and the matriarch, how
they scold you differently
forget the praises.



pay attention


to subtle ways his face slows and darkens
how she didn’t say hello this time
your words: repeats without any sense of irony
breath getting brittle

little mouse

the lung shallow water revealing pipes and shoe.
your feet: 2 raisins, or 2 bees that will not sit
but also will not leave this place
this bright hill of mustard plate above the freeway.

readers

“read a few more pages even
though I like this book, sometimes
I feel like I’m reading a classic just to say I’ve read it.”



`
what else can be done here, but to say things—I wish for you to say sage things.


“I have such trouble
I always feel like I should be
communicating with them
or else, why be together at all?”




your trouble speaks for you dear man like snow between vertebrae


“ mine was more dramatic (better)
but he’s still the genius.”




I hate that word—I think he paid for it. I want to hold your voice in a cup