Exchange of Devouring
I knock on your plastic door.
A power dynamic opens.
A claw falls off in the sand.
Our wounds smelled bad
upon the earth. Displeasure,
undisguised. Rub some ground
in it. I dreamed the year
was nineteen-nineteen.
Wrote it out in cursive on
my white receipt.
Influenza. Cream on white.
Debbie put her hands down
my neck and shoulders.
Debbie pulled an oiled finger
up my face while I recalled
Judith beheading Holofernes.
The dark soothing colors.
A piece of glass held back
the women and the light
inside the oils. The light
a pummeled silver, severing
the neck. I tapped my claw
against the screen.
She can't see herself.
Judith had a servant.
Or: Judith had a friend. To Judith
she was loyal. Her reasons
are obscure and not
the subject of the painting.
To see oneself as silver,
pathologic and excessive.
To see oneself is tragic
when you could see a friend.
Today again I woke up anxious.
Day is where the dream
gets set. Sewn in
heated threads. Influence
stiff cream, mastered.
We let it out we let we
made it stumble out. It stung
us like a scorpion, exactly.
You knock on the door,
a power dynamic holds
me, loyal as a noise.
"Off With His Hands," I Softly Commanded
Yeah right, like I would stand here and
compare myself to the common fern.
Ancient and fetal and its induced curl
exceeds and diminishes every mood
I could ever hope to have. Old
voluptuous. Shut and shut. Vamping
tassels in the wind. Just so saturated.
And delicately divided. It must be
Saturday. The day a green sprig
on the tongue. I'm more separated.
I'm a climate in your lap. Butterflied,
to see the word inside it.
I admire the way you open and shut
at will. Was it only one word? It was but
it was always switching. I admire the way
they never stand alone. Doubly penetrated
god oh wow. Orange eyed. Suppress that.
Timidly Kimberley breathed her name
onto the glass. Somehow this occasion
is causing her to tremor. Somewhere
a citation demands me pinkly: GIVE.
