you can’t drink glass
without becoming
something else
sure, everyone has heartache
but mine lives
in my body
it moves as i move
it stares back at me
BUENA VISTA PARK 2AM
these men carry
famine in them
eyes
knives
the lamps throw their light
against branches
the branches rake their shadows
across a man’s naked back
his back flat as a table
the table set for me
i did not come here hungry
& yet
i eat.
PENTIMENTO
the mass-produced
painting of a field
in winter hanging
above the bed
in this west oakland
motel room starts moving
on its own inside
the faux gold frame.
it begins as always
with whiteness swallowing
the rest of the painting
in its dumb bloodslit
hunger. then as always
a pulse of the backlit
blue veins rising up
like abrasions on a pale
boy’s back. followed
by the inevitable red
riven out the snow bank
taking the shape
of a scythe or sieve
or finally a boy or the shape
of a boy growing antlers
or the shape of antlers
wherever his hands
are meant to be now.
but they’re impossible
to see in all the movement.
impossible to move
his hands & you have
to wonder how a boy
or the shape of a boy
wound up here
in this unstable field.
if only i knew the history
of art i could give you
more than the color
of the thing. i could tell
exactly what school
this painting’s in. i could
use the painter’s biography
to make sense of it
his fucked head & terrible
terrible life. i could use
expensive words to make
these bizarre gestures
tenable. i wonder
if every one of these
reprints is moving
in the same fashion?
or is it just this one
staring upside down
at a boy on his back
on a filthy white blanket
while the shape
of a strange man moves
in unspeakable ways
over my body.
STANDARDS
and again the test comes back negative for waterborne parasites
for gonorrhea of the throat and of elsewhere for white blood cells in the stool
this isn’t always true sometimes it’s a phone call from your lover
sometimes it’s your computer blinking on with news of what’s wrong
with your body this time
simple really how he says the name of a disease
and suddenly you’re on your back staring out the window onto a highway
suddenly a woman enters the room to wrap a black cuff around your arm
and squeeze until you’re no longer sick
to slip a device under your tongue check if your sweat’s accompanied
by the heat it demanded
and aren’t we all of elsewhere sometimes the nowhere places you make yourself
inside the hallowed chambers of the hospital and inside the man’s unsure voice
when he calls and is too scared to name the precise strain of letters
you might share now what parasite might feed on the topsoil of your groin
what laugh track what tabernacle unlatched to let all that god in
what bacteria spreading its legs in your throat as you speak
when the illness is terminal you drink an eighth of paint thinner
while all the color drains from your face
all those little rocks in your gut turned to buses all those buses full of strange men
each one degree apart all going somewhere and gone now
funny how a word can do that garage the body
what if instead he’d simply called to say epithalamium or new car or sorry
ESSAY ON CRYING IN PUBLIC
i’m bent over / the sidewalk weeping / outside the public theatre / you stand above me / horse built from a father’s beer cans / you still have that other man’s mouth on you / i can taste it / with the grunt of my hands / it’s my fault / always is / i say do what you will / + your will is done / so what i was born drunk + mean with my teeth knocked out / so what my first noise was crying + i’ve been going-strong ever since / that other man has a name / i hate that / he has a mouth + fixed-gear bike + hiv / + you sat on his couch waiting for him / to say anything / that you’re pretty / or nice / or have nice sneakers / then you leapt in his body + lived there a while / maybe brushed your teeth ate a spoiled piece of fruit / then came back to me / with your house keys out / the ones i’d cut for you / said you couldn’t stop / thinking of me / how he tasted too sweet / cut flowers in chemical powder / candy souring in heat / how glad you are to live / here / where everything feels safe / basic real-estate / my house + bed / a thin sheet of latex / my chest a coffer to store your futures in / how bad does the news have to be before you get to shoot the messenger / how can we bury the hatchet / when it always ends up in my back / when you tell me / he emptied you / like an animal / hide / i’m fine / until i’m inconsolable / in public + you’re offering vacant comfort / how bad he was in his body / how much it hurt / you /