Living

Frères humains qui après nous vivez,
Soon they’ ll have the speed freak twisting
On a scaffold, soon the birds
Will come to peck out his eyes, & when
He’ s too weak & exhausted to turn
His head away, they’ ll do it, too,
They’ ll peck his eyes right out.
You’ ll want to watch it happen, you’ ll want
To witness it. You’ ll want to see Paolo
And Francesca almost touch before
They’ re swept away again, him in one line
Waiting for rations, her in another one,
Both of  them naked, standing there,

Don't be misled:
that sea-song you hear
when the shell's at your ear?
It's all in your head.

That primordial tide —
the slurp and salt-slosh
of the brain's briny wash —
is on the inside.

Truth be told, the whole place,
everything that the eye
can take in, to the sky
and beyond into space,

lives inside of your skull.
When you set your sad head
down on Procrustes' bed,
you lay down the whole

At nights birds hammered my unborn
child’ s heart to strength, each strike bringing

bones and spine to glow, her lungs pestled
loud as the sea I was raised a sea anemone

among women who cursed their hearts
out, soured themselves, never-brides,

into veranda shades, talcum and tea moistened
their quivering jaws, prophetic without prophecy.

Anvil-black, gleaming garlic nubs, the pageant arrived with sails unfurled
from Colchis and I rejoiced like a broken

Outside the igloo he waited
for an invitation to come inside.
There was no knocker, no doorbell.
He coughed, there was no reply.

He crouched down and peered in.
He felt the warm air from a fire
pat his cheeks and ruffle his hair.
Hello he said quietly and repeated it.

The frost in his toes urged him in,
so did the pain in his gut. His knees
one by one welcomed the snow
and brought him into the warmth.

In goes the cafeteria worker in her hairnet.
In goes the philosophy teacher
explaining the theory of eternal
return, and Anton Stadler with his clarinet,
still owing money to Mozart. In
goes Mozart. Everyone flopped into the creel
of the happy fisherman, everyone eaten.
Every river is Lethean,
so why should we care
if it’ s not the same river? I hate
how everything changes, tree
to failing term paper, chatelaine
to beheaded plotter, drug dealer to narc.
The heart softening faster than cereal

1

The long incision. The incipient voyage from aortic arch to thoracic inlet. Small-particled is the corpuscled city. (Bustling opuscula.) A city of animal electricity. A lowing cycling mass. Calm the cowed heart. Still the browbeating heart. Cool the controversial hearthstone. Let the blade intervene where the divine intersects bovinity.

2

Melt the fat around the heart;
Leave only muscle.

For us
Spectators

Leave
Only muscle;

Only trim the fat
To depth.

And, even if you
Nick the heart,

If you tear it
Or scratch it,

If you slice a petal off it,
Don’ t sweat it.

Be mindful only
That you leave the muscle

Clean,
Sheared of  fat.

Or you can
Char the heart,

Melt down the fat,
Then eat it

With fucking
Fava beans.

Whatever you do,
Be sure

‘Aber die Thronen, wo? Die Tempel, und wo die Gefäße,
Wo mit Nektar gefüllt, Göttern zu Lust der Gesang?

‘Someone’ s got it in for me’

for Jack Spicer
the fabber craftsman

I. THE FUNERAL MARCH (CHICAGO AND ORLEANS)

On the platter set out in the center of the Matyó-embroidered tablecloth
was the syringe. And around it was silence. My father
gazed at my mother, and she back at him. Slowly,
faltering, he began to speak. I was seized by
an unusual shuddering. I recall that he used the word fate,
and that if   I consented to the injected dose,
we could all fall asleep. We would stay together
for all time. And evade the uncertainty in mortifying
desperation. A fifteen-year-old’ s desire to live
cried out in me: “No!” To which

1

I now release from my blood the bird of   thirty she wasted
that’ s how wars crumble us

I now tell those who are exhausted from the expense
of children the secret of   happiness and happiness itself