The Fish
For Lesa Sullivan
The fish, she tells me, is the most romantic
of all the animals for lovers to eat.
Their bodies are smooth and silver
trailing fins, a watery shadow,
a veil of movement
like Susanne Farrel fluttering in the blue Vienna Waltz.
You can hold them gracefully in your hands
a child of the earth, a sacrifice.
Slicing the thin bellies open with a knife
insides spill urgently and bloom into a tangled flower
irresistible to touch the glistening organs that wrap around
the tender, pale flesh like the lips of a virgin.
A real man, she says to me, isn’t afraid to put his
lips and tongue against the raw ocher,
to slide along the halved canyon and
taste the salts and tides of our beginnings.
1999
Ambrosia
For Dakota Brown
Take me to the mud baths of Calphi
and let me lie in their yolk.
Let me listen to the women
whisper my future as they paste my body
in their olive mud.
I want to split cypress with
the Oracle of Delphi
and let her tell me
of what I have left
that is still me.
Fan me with the feathers
of the White Dragon
I want to listen to my own
frozen breath in the crystal breeze.
Take me to the woods of Ethos
where the season is always fall
where I can dance, as Puck, once again
with gold leaves in my hair
And the blood of pomegranates on my lips.
Before I embrace
The dark bark legs
Of Mother Cerweiden--
Before she pulls back
into her dark carriage
take me into her eyes
and let me see all the stars
I did not see when I looked
up into the sky--
Let me hear the music I might have played
if I had chosen a
different song to sing
--1999
FAT
I want to be
one of the crisp wafer boys
want to melt in your mouth
not in your hands
want to start myself over
from the bone
want to step away from myself
a shining skeleton
and leave my fatty pulp behind
want my skin to stretch
over my bones like spandex
“it isn’t who you are
it’s what you look like”
I want to shave all my hair off
want to puncture holes
in my hands and ankles
and squeeze out all
that toxic pus
I believed in
don’t want to stop there
want to lose all the excess fat
in my brain
want to lose the broken sentences, dyslexia,
the pain, the feverish thinking,
the night sweats, the excess memory, the lies
the lies I’ve told and
believed
want my whole self
everything about me to get thinner
and thinner and thinner
erased, a clean slate,
blank page, empty plate
want to be fucking reborn
want to melt away, fast away
thinner and thinner and thinner
until I’m nothing
nothing but the thin breeze
that lifts the hair
on your arms
--2001
For Lesa Sullivan
The fish, she tells me, is the most romantic
of all the animals for lovers to eat.
Their bodies are smooth and silver
trailing fins, a watery shadow,
a veil of movement
like Susanne Farrel fluttering in the blue Vienna Waltz.
You can hold them gracefully in your hands
a child of the earth, a sacrifice.
Slicing the thin bellies open with a knife
insides spill urgently and bloom into a tangled flower
irresistible to touch the glistening organs that wrap around
the tender, pale flesh like the lips of a virgin.
A real man, she says to me, isn’t afraid to put his
lips and tongue against the raw ocher,
to slide along the halved canyon and
taste the salts and tides of our beginnings.
1999
Ambrosia
For Dakota Brown
Take me to the mud baths of Calphi
and let me lie in their yolk.
Let me listen to the women
whisper my future as they paste my body
in their olive mud.
I want to split cypress with
the Oracle of Delphi
and let her tell me
of what I have left
that is still me.
Fan me with the feathers
of the White Dragon
I want to listen to my own
frozen breath in the crystal breeze.
Take me to the woods of Ethos
where the season is always fall
where I can dance, as Puck, once again
with gold leaves in my hair
And the blood of pomegranates on my lips.
Before I embrace
The dark bark legs
Of Mother Cerweiden--
Before she pulls back
into her dark carriage
take me into her eyes
and let me see all the stars
I did not see when I looked
up into the sky--
Let me hear the music I might have played
if I had chosen a
different song to sing
--1999
FAT
I want to be
one of the crisp wafer boys
want to melt in your mouth
not in your hands
want to start myself over
from the bone
want to step away from myself
a shining skeleton
and leave my fatty pulp behind
want my skin to stretch
over my bones like spandex
“it isn’t who you are
it’s what you look like”
I want to shave all my hair off
want to puncture holes
in my hands and ankles
and squeeze out all
that toxic pus
I believed in
don’t want to stop there
want to lose all the excess fat
in my brain
want to lose the broken sentences, dyslexia,
the pain, the feverish thinking,
the night sweats, the excess memory, the lies
the lies I’ve told and
believed
want my whole self
everything about me to get thinner
and thinner and thinner
erased, a clean slate,
blank page, empty plate
want to be fucking reborn
want to melt away, fast away
thinner and thinner and thinner
until I’m nothing
nothing but the thin breeze
that lifts the hair
on your arms
--2001
