my heart is one fast animal

We are heading into the last leg of this Wandering Uterus Tour, and plan to go out with a bang here in LALA land. Hope to see folks around!!!

* June 30: Da Poetry Lounge, Los Angeles
GreenWay Court Theater, 544 N. Fairfax Blvd, Los Angeles
9 p.m., $5

* July 1: The Ugly Mug, Orange, CA
Two Idiots Peddling Poetry
The Ugly Mug Café, 261 North Glassell, Orange, CA
7:30 p.m., $2 cover

* July 2: Noisy Voyeur: poetry, photo exhibition, live erotic photoshoot, music, and more! 
at the 2nd City Arts Council Gallery
435 Alamitos Avenue, Long Beach, CA
8-11 p.m.
$10 at the door, $5 if you come erotically costumed... bust out those boas! lace up those corsets! buckle up those boots! Hosted by the fantabulous Mindy Nettifee!

Featuring poetry by the Wandering Uterus Tour, plus photography by Alexandra Gibson (http://alexandragibsonphotography.com) 

* July 3: Hollywood CA 
Hollywood Institute of Poetics
8-10 p.m.
at Stories Bookstore, 1716 Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles

Marty and Tristan, with Corrie Greathouse

hello my LJ darlings. 

 Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Awards

Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - 7:30pm

The Guild Complex is pleased to announce the 16th anniversary of the Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Awards (GBOMA) for poetry. Twenty semi-finalists will be selected from open submissions. These 20 poets will perform their work in front of an audience on Tuesday, July 14. Poets must be 18 years of age or older by the date of the reading and a legal resident of Illinois to enter.

The winner will receive a $500 cash prize.

Submission guidelines:
• Work must be previously unpublished.
• Only one submission per poet – no exceptions please. (If you can’t decide which poem to submit, ask a friend to help you decide, but not the Guild Complex.)
• Submissions must be typed in a legible font, no less than 12-pt. type size.
• Submitted poems must be performed by the poet in 4 minutes or less. You will be timed. For the pleasure of the audience and that your work may be heard and enjoyed, please edit your poem to fit comfortably within the time limit. Poets who read work that is too long or read very fast to fit the time limit historically have not done well in the competition. (The audience is the judge, and they will judge on their listening experience.)Those poets who go beyond the 4 minute limit will not be eligible to advance in the competition. No props or musical accompaniment are allowed.
• The poet who wrote the work must be the poet who performs the work.
• The poet absolutely must be available to read on Tuesday, July 14. If you are not going to be in town, please do not submit. This is a performance competition.

Please send submissions to:
Guild Complex
P.O. Box 478880
Chicago, IL 60647-9998
Attn: GBOMA 

or electronically to ellenw@guildcomplex.org with the subject line GBOMA.

A $5 entry fee should accompany each submission. (Because of the tight economic times, we have cut the entry fee in half this year. The submission fee helps to assuage our costs for the venue and the cash prize.) Electronic payment is available through paypal on the Guild Complex website: www.guildcomplex.org

Please DO NOT send submissions c/o the Chopin Theatre at their address. The Chopin is our venue, not our organization. Any poems delivered there WILL NOT be included for consideration. Also, hand delivery is not possible.

Please note: the Guild Complex is a small shop, so following the instructions carefully raises your chances of having your work arrive successfully. E-mails can get lost – especially if the subject line is not marked as directed above. An acknowledgment e-mail will be sent for all submissions that are received by the deadline and have paid their submission fee.

Poets should include their contact information -- name, address, telephone number, email address and the title of the poem – on a separate sheet. (If you’re sending an e-mail, please attach your contact information separately from the poem.) Please DO NOT put your name on the poem. Submissions must be post-marked by Monday, June 29, if sent through the postal service. Electronic submissions must be time stamped by 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday, July 1.Notification of semi-finalists will be sent on Monday, July 6. Remember, the competition is Tuesday, July 14.

Again those key dates are:
• Monday, June 29: last chance to send your poem through the mail.
• Wednesday, July 1: last chance to send your poem by e-mail.
• Monday, July 6: Notification of semi-finalists.
• Tuesday, July 14: Competition.

Reading location:
Chopin Theatre
1534 W. Division (intersection of Division, Ashland and Milwaukee), Chicago, IL
Reading begins promptly at 7:30 p.m.

We wish good luck to everyone. Please spread the word. You may contact us with questions @ ellenw@guildcomplex.org or 877.394.5061. (E-mail will get the most prompt response.)

For those who wish to attend the performance – which are always amazing – we will request an admission fee of $5 for adults, $3 for students, children under 12 are free. (Please note that many of the poems have adult content.) The Guild Complex presents 95% of our readings free of charge. A few times a year, we ask for admission to help us underwrite additional costs for that particular reading. We know these are tough economic times. No one will be turned away.

Thanks,
The Guild Complex

During the first Wandering Uterus Tour, we kept a group online journal of the goings-on... that being 1999, it was unusual and garnered quite a following. This time around, a full ten years later, it's far less unusual and also, far less likely to be full of bizarre mishaps and ramblings. But here I am, in Seattle at the start of another tour -- a working vacation with shows? a vacation with working and shows? a touring vacation with work? -- anyway, a series of performances over the course of three weeks away from home.

Things haven't gone exactly according to plan with putting this together, as I underestimated the upheaval that would be moving and looking for work and getting started at a new job, and Andi couldn't have foreseen the family and business issues that would keep her from being able to hit the road... but the uterus wanders on, regardless. 

So I'm posted up here in Daemond and Inti's gorgeous home, with a stove and tea and wireless and enough allergy medicine to keep the cats out of my lungs. Their home is organized, ergonomic, and ecologically sound -- very Seattle, in other words. 

I will need to go out and have more adventures, so as to have things to write about here.

I went for a walk today, and tried to find a yard sale for which there were many, many signs that seemed only to take me in circles. With me on this walk I took: keys to the house, and $10. Also, I wrote the address of the house on my stomach, because if I got really sweaty I figured it would smudge off my hand. 

Um, I have a new haircut. Thanks to my brilliant stylist-slash-girlfriend. And a hairstylist at Milio's in Chicago, who stripped and dyed my hair just before the LAST Wandering Uterus Tour, and to whom I was randomly assigned by the receptionist when we called for appointments. Insert Twilight Zone music here.

Tomorrow night is the show in Bellingham, a town whose name I can never remember and therefore always want to refer to as Birmingham, or Binghamton. 

Also, the kind gentleman who hosts it calls himself The Podfather of Soul. I think he's interviewing us tomorrow. I'll give you the link then. Don't hurt yourself with the waiting.

I leave town on Saturday to begin the Wandering Uterus 2009 Tour. Yesterday I bought sundresses. Aside from that, I'm pretty much wildly unprepared to go on the road for three weeks. Still probably readier than I was ten years ago when we did this for the first time, and for two and a half months.

I will be in Seattle, Portland (no show in Portland, just family, unless somebody wants to hook a girl up last-minute), the Bay, and LA. If you are there, I'd love to see you! Details below.

In sad news, Andi Strickland won't be able to hit the road with me because of family and business stuff. But Tristan Silverman will be sitting in as a special guest for the Cali shows. So that rocks. And I'm psyched to finally do shows with Karen Finneyfrock and be on the road with Emily Kagan Trenchard.

Tour Schedule, as of now...

June 15-20: with Karen Finneyfrock.
June 23-July 3: with Emily Kagan-Trenchard and special guest appearances by Tristan Silverman

June 15: Bellingham, Washington
"Poetry Night" -- open mic and feature. 8 p.m. all ages
The Darkroom, 310 W. Champion Street 

June 16: Seattle, Washington
Richard Hugo House with special Seattle guests
7:30pm, $5, all ages.

June 17: Seattle, Washington Poetry Slam
Spitfire, 2219 4th Ave., Seattle
7 p.m., $5 cover, 21 and over, ID required

June 23: Sacramento Poetry Slam
Mahogany Urban Poetry Series
Queen Sheba Restaurant, 1704 Broadway, Sacramento CA 
8pm, $5 cover. All ages.

June 24: Berkeley Poetry Slam
The Starry Plough, 3101 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley, CA
7:30 p.m.

June 25: possible house concert -- details TBD

June 28: possible workshop -- details TBD

June 30: Da Poetry Lounge, Los Angeles
GreenWay Court Theater, 544 N. Fairfax Blvd, Los Angeles
9 p.m., $5

July 1: The Ugly Mug, Orange, CA
Two Idiots Peddling Poetry
The Ugly Mug Café, 261 North Glassell, Orange, CA
7:30 p.m., $2 cover

July 3: Hollywood CA 
Hollywood Institute of Poetics
at Stories Bookstore, 1716 Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles


 

One of my many "move resolutions" was to be more aggressive in attempting to get published.  I figure LJ is as good a way as any to share the calls for submissions I run into...

•••CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: BEST NEW POETS, AN ANTHOLOGY OF 50 EMERGING WRITERS, ACCEPTING SUBMISSIONS FOR ITS OPEN COMPETITION
Deadline: June 1, 2009.

Entering poets cannot have published a book-length poetry collection by November 2009 (chapbooks do not affect your eligibility). Entry fee: $3.50. Each entry can contain two poems. Selected poets receive five copies of the print anthology. This year's guest editor is Kim Addonizio. In 2009, we're taking entries through ManuscriptHub. To create your submission, go to www.bestnewpoets.org for details.


•••CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: ANTHOLOGY SEEKING POETRY BY MEN ON WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A MAN TODAY
Deadline: June 30

Interested in poems that explore the complex psychosocial issue of male identity. Please avoid poems that project an overripe machismo. Submit to John Smelcer, P.O. Box 234, Binghamton, NY 13905.


•••CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS FOR BELLEVUE LITERARY REVIEW’S ANNUAL PRIZES
Deadline: August 1, 2009

$1,000 Poetry Prize (Judge: Tony Hoagland)
$1,000 Fiction Prize (Judge: Gail Godwin)
$1,000 Nonfiction Prize (Judge: Phillip Lopate).

Looking for exceptional writing about health, healing, illness, the body, and the mind. Entry fee: $15 ($20 includes subscription). Submit online: www.blreview.org.


•••CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: THE TEACHER'S VOICE, A LITERARY MAGAZINE FOR POETS AND WRITERS IN EDUCATION.

A free online magazine and teacher resource, they seek poems, short stories, creative nonfiction, and essays about the promise and hard truths of teaching in our schools and colleges. Chapbook and poetry contests too. Send to: The Teacher’s Voice, P.O. Box 150384, Kew Gardens, NY 11415. Query: editor@the-teachers-voice.org/. Visit: www.the-teachers-voice.org/.


•••CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: AESTHETICA MAGAZINE, A UK-BASED INTERNATIONAL ARTS PUBLICATION, ANNOUNCES COMPETITION
Deadline: August 31, 2009

Three recipients to receive £500 (approx $750) each in three categories:
Poetry, fiction, artwork & photography

The 2008 Aesthetica Creative Works Competition provided a huge boost for the winners and finalists involved. Since the publication of the Creative Works Annual, some of the winners and finalists have enjoyed further publications and commissions, as well as exhibitions around the globe from London to New York.

For complete details: http://www.aestheticamagazine.com/submission_guide.htm
Pauline Bache
pauline@aestheticamagazine.com
www.aestheticamagazine.com


•••FELLOWSHIP: MENDOCINO COAST WRITERS CONFERENCE AND POETRY CONTEST IN CELEBRATION OF ITS 20TH ANNIVERSARY July 30-August 2, 2009.
Deadline: June 9, 2009

The Mendocino Coast Writers Conference is an intimate conference limited to 100 participants where you will be encouraged to find and express your own voice by excellent writers who are outstanding teachers. You will explore how your writing can shape the world. Whether fiction, nonfiction,or poetry, words are a powerful instrument for change. Faculty includes: Ellen Bass, Charlotte Gullick, Gennifer Choldenko, Robert McDowell and many others. A generous donor has offered to fund a full fellowship to the poet who wins the conference poetry contest.

For details on the poetry contest, other fellowship opportunities, and the conference program, see info@mcwc.org or 707-962-2600, ext. 2167.

***

The Ruskin Art Club Poetry Award is for an unpublished poem. This year’s judge is Kate Gale. Award is $1,000 and publication of the awarded poem in The Los Angeles Review published by Red Hen Press. Submit up to three poems of no more than 120 lines and a $20 entry fee. Include name and title of each poem entered on cover sheet only, and send a SASE for notification. Entries must be postmarked by September 30, 2009.

The Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award is for a previously unpublished original collection of poetry. This year’s judge is Nick Flynn. Award is $3,000 and publication of the awarded collection by Red Hen Press. Entry fee is $25, and there is a 48 page minimum. Name on cover sheet only, and send a SASE for notification. Entries must be postmarked by August 31, 2009.

www.redhen.org
 

 VOX FERUS AFTER DARK: 
a pay-what-you-can workshop open to the Chicago poetry community

every 2nd and 4th Friday at 7:30 p.m. SHARP starting May 8, 2009
(arrival at 7 p.m. encouraged)

2nd Fridays: WRITING, 4th Fridays: PERFORMANCE

Facilitated by Andi Strickland and Marty McConnell, with occasional guests.

anniversary song


the man in the night taxi

could be driving us toward anything

 

strobe lights in the window

of the neon sign store throb

 

and what the hell is night. what

is a kiss but a long-distance call

 

the blinds of every townhome stay closed

as if we were modest or it mattered who saw us

 

god after god takes a pass. the night

is a puddle made for drowning

 

we kiss as if plucking the lips off

chilly embryos, as if required by contract

 

we fight, ordinary as rats in a dumpster.

anything holy in this went extinct

 

with yesterday’s cigarette. stop

the car. this is where we get off.

 

 

 

 

 

She was my first workshop teacher, a brilliant poet, and one of the kindest people I've known. When the workshop ended, we gave her a blanket because she was always cold, and one of those strings you attach to your glasses, because by the end of each session she'd have lost all three pair she brought in -- one blue, one green, one red -- one under a stack of poems, one buried in her grand morass of hair, one knocked to the floor in a gesture of joy. What a light. What a loss for us left behind.

Rough Music

BY DEBORAH DIGGES 

This is how it’s done.

The villagers surround the house,

beat pots and pans, beat shovels to drain spouts,

crowbars to shutters, rakes

raining rake tines on corrugated washtubs, or wire

whips, or pitchforks, or horseshoes.

At first they keep their distance

as if to wake you like blackbirds, though the birds

have long since fled, flown deep into the field.

And for a while you lie still, you stand it,

even smile up at your crimes

accompanying, each one, the sunrise stuttering across the ceiling

like the sounds within the sounds,

like lightning inside thrum-tink, woman-in-wood-shoes-fall-

down-wooden-stairs, like wrong-wrong inside rung-rung,

brick-smacking-brick housing ice-breaking-ice-

breaking-glass . . .

I mention this since this is what my dreams

are lately, rough music,

as if all the boys to women I have been, the muses, ghost-

girls and the shadows of the ancestors

circled my bed in their cheap accoutrements

and banged my silver spoons on iron skillets, moor

rock on moor rock, thrust yardsticks into the fans.

Though I wake and dress and try

to go about my day,

room to room to room they follow me.

By evening, believe me, I’d give back everything,

throw open my closets, pull out my drawers spilling my hoard

of dance cards, full for the afterlife,

but my ears are bleeding.

I’m trapped in the bell tower during wind,

or I’m the wind itself against the furious, unmetered,

anarchical applause of leaves late autumns

in the topmost branches.

Now the orchestra at once throws down its instruments.

The doors in the house of God tear off their hinges—

I’m the child's fist drumming its mother’s back,

rock that hits the skull that silences the martyr,

or I’m the martyr’s tongue cut out, fire inside fire,

clapper back to ore, ore into the mountain.

I’m gone, glad, empty, good

riddance, some shoulder to the sea, the likeness

of a wing, or the horizon, merely, that weird mirage, stone-

skipping moon, the night filled up with crows.

I clap my hands.

They scatter, scatter, fistful after

fistful of sand on water, desert for desert, far from here.

 when the apologies fall apart,

paper soaked by an unpredicted

storm, when everything you swathed

 

in plastic gets damaged by the wrapping

and not by the rain – that is not the day

for long drives across glaciated plains.

all that sky. fields of flat accusation. you

 

and the radio and gas station coffee

too hot to drink. tick off every dumb

impulsive thing you’ve ever done wrong.

these are the names of your children.

 

what you’ve made and sent out into

the world. you never thought

you were perfect, but here is proof

if ever you needed it. you taste it

 

with every boiling swill of caffeine,

every stale truck stop croissant. regret

is a small word. the devastated city

of your chest is governed by a man

 

with no arms. he leans forward

as if to embrace you. as if he

were the only one who still can.

 

 

 on good days, the dog only tears up

the old sofa. the door only slams

on one finger, the grease fire

in the kitchen is easily doused.

only one of the milk cartons spoils

in your hand, the ceiling leaks

but the sewer pipe does not overflow,

the frogs that fall from the clear sky

have the most beatific look, almost

a grin, on their broad, exhausted faces.

 when Jenny broke the swing
we circled, three small sisters,
a fanged menagerie – fat 

Jenny with the stringy hair 
and house that smelled
like a basement and the brother 

half our age who showed us 
his penis, jumping out 
of the hall closet bared

as if this were something
he’d made or at which
we should be amazed

and because my sisters looked
first at me and then down
at him I twisted my face

into an adult’s, into the look
Mom gave the men who came
door to door selling vacuum

cleaners and long-distance
calling plans and said,
"let’s go. it’s probably time

for dinner." and despite it being
maybe three o’clock in the afternoon
they nodded solemnly and we filed out

of that house with its rust carpeted
hallways and the TV perpetually tuned
to Flash Gordon toward our old

converted farmhouse of a house
with the blue metal swingset out back,
the white plastic seat snapped clear

in half where Jenny had jumped 
for no clear reason and we laughed
and pointed as if our hands

were their own animals, nothing
we’d made, and nothing we 
would call our own. 

 So here's the deal, y'all. I e-stalked Dorianne Laux for approximately three years in an attempt to get her to read at louderARTS. And, presto!!! Not only is she featuring at our 11-year anniversary, but she and Joseph Millar are doing a workshop. Of course, I'm no longer in NYC and am missing all the fun. Boo. 

If you are anywhere near NYC, I highly highly recommend that you register and take this workshop. If you know their work, you know why. If you don't, look it up! Astonishing. And the workshop? $30 if you register by April 20. That is insanely cheap for a workshop with poets of this caliber. For real. 

Sigh. 

***

the louderARTS Project presents a workshop with award-winning poets
DORIANNE LAUX and JOSEPH MILLAR

Sunday, April 26
4-7 p.m.
242 W 27th St, Suite 3B
New York, NY 10001

To register, email workshops (at) louderARTS (dot) com or visit www.louderARTS.com.

Advance registration (before April 20): only $30!
Late registration: $45 from April 20th - April 24th if space is still available

A finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, DORIANNE LAUX’s
fourth book of poems, "Facts About the Moon" (W.W. Norton), is the
recipient of the Oregon Book Award, chosen by Ai.  It was also
short-listed for the 2006 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize for the most
outstanding book of poems published in the United States and chosen by
the Kansas City Star as a noteworthy book of 2005.  Laux is also
author of three collections of poetry from BOA Editions, "Awake"
(1990) introduced by Philip Levine, recently reprinted by Eastern
Washington University Press, "What We Carry" (1994) and "Smoke"
(2000). "Superman: The Chapbook" was released by Red Dragonfly Press
in January 2008.  Co-author of "The Poet's Companion," she’s the
recipient of two Best American Poetry Prizes, a Best American Erotic
Poems Prize, a Pushcart Prize, two fellowships from The National
Endowment for the Arts and a Guggenheim Fellowship.  Her work has
appeared in the Best of the American Poetry Review, The Norton
Anthology of Contemporary Poetry and Best of the Net, and she’s a
frequent contributor to magazines as various as the New York
Quarterly, Orion, Ms. Magazine and a host og on-line journals.  Laux
has waited tables and written poems in San Diego, Los Angeles,
Berkeley, and Petaluma, California, and as far north as Juneau,
Alaska. For the last 13 years she has taught at the University of
Oregon in Eugene and since 2004, as core faculty at Pacific
University’s Low Residency MFA Program.  Her summers are spent
teaching poetry workshops in the beauty of Esalen in Big Sur, Spoleto,
Italy and Lake Atitlan, Guatemala. She and her husband, poet Joseph
Millar, now live in Raleigh where she has joined the faculty at North
Carolina State University as a Poet-in-Residence.

JOSEPH MILLAR is the author of Fortune, from Eastern Washington
University Press.  His first collection, "Overtime," (2001) was
finalist for the Oregon Book Award and the Robert H. Winner Memorial
Award from the Poetry Society of America.  Millar grew up in
Pennsylvania, attended Johns Hopkins University and spent 25 years in
the San Francisco Bay area, working at a variety of jobs, from
telephone repairman to commercial fisherman. His poems have appeared
in numerous magazines including The Southern Review, TriQuarterly
Review, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, DoubleTake, New Letters,
Ploughshares,  Manoa, and River Styx. His work has won fellowships
from the National Endowment for the Arts in Poetry, Montalvo Center
for the Arts and Oregon Literary Arts.  In 1997 he gave up his job as
a telephone installation foreman and moved to western Oregon where he
now teaches at Pacific University’s Low Residency MFA Program and
yearly at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur. Pulitzer Prize winner Yusef
Komunyakaa has said, “There's a tenderness at the core of Fortune,
where the commonplace becomes atypical and fantastical, and each poem
possesses a voice that summons and reveals. Joseph Millar is a poet we
can believe.”

there is no yesterday from here. a perch

so close to the window the glass billows,

warping the pavement and the parked cars

below. fry oil gone bad on the back

of your tongue. Buddha, Mohammed,

a Jesus fled on the earlier train. it’s you

and the chemical night that is all

you know. yesterday is actually

everywhere. the sheets run with it

like Atalanta before the apples,

before seduction, the taps

on the bathtub are bronze

knots you twist until steam

fills the room, hits the window,

the metal shifting in your hand

like a live branch. you look

down. water rising around the wheels

like a hurricane’s wish. what now?

the storm’s long gone. you’re a myth.

 

APRIL SHOWS!

 

April 8: Normal, IL

April 9: Lincoln, Nebraska

April 11: Omaha, Nebraska

April 17: Columbus, Ohio

April 18: Columbus, Ohio (workshop)

April 20: Chicago, IL

 

* 

 

without food, the body becomes
dust. without water, a sweater
shrunk to doll-size in the dryer.
when I am not with you, my heart
waddles from room to room

like a drunken toddler. lost.
I did not mean to need you.
though I did intend your mouth
and its several magics. now? now

when it rains I open the windows.
let the sky in to drown me
if that’s what it desires.

2

I am not a patient girl.
but I know things about skin.
about what it takes to fill

a bloodline, how to prepare
a body for ink. your cough 
in the next room is food.
there are no substitutes

for the organ you’ve become
-- you are not an appendix
or the gall bladder, nothing
so scantily missed. I will not

leave you. here. my heart
in a soup tureen. arteries
running with rainwater.
your favorite broth.

3

tell me something
about fire. the lighters
littering your mattress.
you watched me sleep

the first time. since then
it’s been my turn. I record
your murmurs and sighs
on the sheet in expensive

eyeliner. this is my version
of faithfulness.

4

you feed me catfish
and bacon, though not
at the same time. boil water

for tea and hold my body
like a fleeing animal
while we sleep. I have never

stood so still as the first time
your eyes louvered to ice.
one time a bear came so close
I could hear him breathing.

a bag of dinner trash
in my hand. it’s April
and the rain has turned
to sleet. you and I

are a peculiar miracle.
the lighters on your bed
compasses spinning
in their tiny plastic cases.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

when the dead rise again it will be

with our faces in their gritty fists.

the language of hunger has something

 

to do with love. subway cars

in their dark quarters dream

of being submarines, or coin

dispensers. on film, you look

 

just like your uncle. his eyes

bloated with secrets. you

give nothing away, your pockets

 

lined with old razors, your face

a locked gun closet. no matter

how expensive the fabric, the shroud

swaddling your heart shreds and shreds

 

as that persistent beast claws toward the light

again and again. next time, try kevlar. try

a good linen, pervious to smoke

 

and blood. we have traded

so many injuries our wounds

consider themselves cousins, refuse

to marry. if there is some resolution

 

to be had here, it will have to do

with food. with what we fork

into our corrupted mouth-parts.

 

good thing you don’t take

the subway. good thing I live

3,000 miles away. things

would get complicated if we started

 

telling the truth. if the train stopped

between stations for days in an effort

to become a lighthouse or a microwave.

 

what would we say. what would we pull

from our leather shoulderbags and feed

one another in the haze.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 proof

 

the language of love has something

to do with hunger. if I ravel the veins

from my thighs into straws. if I open

my kneecap and let you suckle

on the ligaments. if I scoop out

my vertebrae, spoon the marrow

out of each cradling cup, will you

believe. if I restring my tendons

to sing your name with each step

if I twist my knuckles like dials

so each is always facing you if I

watch you while you sleep. if I make

your lap my bed and plate and grave.

if I pull out each tooth and shape it

into an animal, present you

a menagerie that has tasted

everything I’ve taken in the mouth.

will you turn your face to me.

lay down your suspicions

like turned meat. eat

until your perfect, toothy heart

believes.