Color Study, or Ode to Discomfort
It was never safe for us—
always beneath the eye is blood;
and maybe a ferocious tongue
called love;
Spring is here again
and so are your teeth, exposed
white as bitter membrane,
there isn’t enough skin
to cover the surface;
But you, blank sentence, naked check, you
sliver of space between, you are the most
bold of all, busy-necked in your vanishing
vigilance, oh please, gather us forth, oh,
please, see me running and yell “Hey!”
until everyone looks and thinks I’m the thief;
In this game I play with myself,
I am the meat and you are
the dog, and I am the bitch, and you
are the muzzle;
Oh, spot me like a cherry, please;
the delay and review,
your octagonal burning,
my credentials, oh. Unthinkable,
this color, unremarkable
dread. I’m tired of sight
and mortification;
This dance old as a dead flowering
root, revealing, in my mind always
red, as the last drops
of evening, then nothing, a hollow
mouth, ripe and rotting.
Aerial Pursuits
Orchid bees iridesce as garbage-swarmed flies,
illusory in the light as in the darkness, just rained-
upon soil and the quiet storm, which was here,
all along smooth patterns of falling, brain in love
with this hour of memory, and a car that died
a long time ago, this hour of the heart, expanded
by a saxophone’s inquiry, turned down turn-up,
an exclamation or perfume-gummed taboo, sweet
mystery of living death’s unasked question, still
these flowers, so red and perched, pinned loosely,
as a hummingbird’s emerald effort, even remotely, it
sings, a squall inconsolable, and my love, constellation
of feathers above, relieved in the escaping across
the way, young men cockle their laughter like ducks,
and we all hate the fly, the filthy wish it gave us.
