One, two three, bridge, two three

For the piecing of parts together, we can play
count the eyes – three, and when the fourth becomes
visible, and not an impenetrable wall of I’ll-lick-your-
hair, or this surface in its smoothness is nothing
like the moon, we will build a bridge together of tap
counting paws.

Look how the cards glow, and the adoration
tossed upward before the beat begins. Melanie
might be questioning the decision to lead with an off-
suit seven, but Kuro don’t mind. He’s all like,
let me touch those locks. I know the fish in the aquarium
are just snack sized, but they’re tasty, too.   

twenty-went two

Like the even space between two things to look out from + a series of bored holes in the struck language we put up to our faces, such are the mean and intentional swearings we cast as prayer, cast as pull, hook as lip, bill as spell. If you punish your name enough it will grow. The box is never quite small enough to take thought and sound out from its interior. I watch the blade-light wood grow its sayings and from below the woman on the ladder looks like an extension corded to the plug of her brush – double-handed and drawing the pale shapes down into something she’ll pronounce with hushes pressed between. No exotic flower on the tongue, just the fret of age and wearing a name not hers outward skinned like this. 

Dr. Steve Realnose is a thing in this city.

The antswarm round your neck up like it was some
collection of tiny field animals and the break
of the building’s corner the pen
to keep them stored. If we’re to believe the lips and neon

a body makes backcropped onto street and scene.
Onto building and hair care procession. Here’s the red of the root and the pale
buff of wet concrete – we will be seated in a flurry of scissorwork –
the brush pull and snap. What rope lines

an ear of corn, what silk pulled taut along the jawline
to draw angles from a face – whoever painted this building
makes dual-headedness feel chic. I trust
the blood that courses just below the scalp runs just the same

temperature as the hot oil treatment – and to look two ways at once
you could just slit your face down the front
and peel it back – eyes stacked on top of eyes on top
of engine-run-red in black and white.

Blue like on the jacksonth/twenty bills

When the waters made their god, they pressed the colors up into rows like a sky/ They talked in collective violence, shined their parts against piping, lost the flute noises among the other noises they had yet to find names for along the edges of the land. When the gods groaned into life it was like there was this reflection of a wheel burning. A rubber tire, hole right in the center of its fire and through that came the clownfish, or the roar of salmon. No one pressed the valves into shapes they couldn’t drink from – there was abundance and there was the spoke of life-like light smearing itself on all glassy surfaces. Now we are in the belly of worship. Now we are confined to metal licking and the lift of organ song – a name for drinking has been pasteurized and vaulted. The fire cones along the ceiling looking for a head to streak with tongues. We sip our wort until the season calls it finished. Blue like the ridden ghost along a ceiling. The framing glow. Arches for the light to linger down. And in the center of our visions the copper weights, the waters process bared and barely free. 

The words say they stick
to the window and the ground and the curb gets flattened
next to the line I’m walking away. I just plumb
outgrew the chair – got up from it and on and on. You see
the building’s number, to call & make the buy. What
childlike things we set out to watch the streets.

My homunculus not a dream-wary one, but really set about
with paint and brush, with making the wood seal up
to wear better in this weather. What I can’t say
is the brick along the back – to throw it, make your fist into a camper,
make it light, draw it along the sealing lines.

Make the hand stand still a while – let the birds drop
their songs and white paint along the cardoor, and don’t step hard
if you can help yourself – don’t step arched along the cracks.
Take the brick and fold it into a film set. We can carry whatever
we want in these bags. Let’s lift now our friends up from this chair
and dance them around before we stall and set it flat down.

A brushman crosses himself in church, the little dreams of dolls dead-eyed
in the antique shops – how they crushed up all the make up

and build a mirror for the world to start its staring into.

XC(o)upon the eighteenth

it’s not that the dead are better, they’re just more practical
take, for instance, the size of their cups or
the way that footsie can starts from the lower part of the calf
and ghost its way up to the top third of the thigh.
Erased blackboard backdrop and the press of flat circles
across the belly. If we were to sit inside our bones, hear
them rattle and fill the space agape in both of our cages
From the flat world on to a pearly string of concrete, the cross
at press in the ground, our hands upbraided in the energy
stammered to the lip of the cup and what other flat surfaces
we may have to cross in hope of gathering enough touches
to claim our bodies whole and shaded. The ash in the tray
a name for each wheel as it rolls through each of us. The lack
of rust and color in our brains, or on the chairs’ arms. A series
of weather patterned into the shape of steam, the forms of us
draped along the iron bars, distant sounds of tin cups dragging
along the interior of the day – vibration imprinted right there
above the table surface. What resonates for us is passing. 

catching ups the past

If you leg it, they will stumble.
Here. I’m just going to
tough-touch my nose
while you take that tape measure
and bite my thigh with it, ok?
While we still, take that picture, too.

O what is this glass
standing in the future of my direct
sightline – beachless
and tabled. Is it a stand-in for my other leg?
The crunch of flash
and lights are on above us. The lights
are always owning
our skin and paces. No fanned out
or fawning crowd of spectators
built into the modern fade of a monument.

Dropping in from behind, I’m almost
certain that young boy
is staring at my ass and not just
the camera pauses here, but what
must be a legal precedent in regards to bathing
suit lengths. Stop the water and the presses.
The buttons on all of our menshirts
are strong and wide and white. What will happen
when it’s too short, when I’m thinking
and my cap gets rid of all of this.

Take the god damn tape up off my leg
you feely cop, you stricture.