It still means fuck all to me

Write of the solitary fence post
of the day you heard the incantatory wisdom of birds of Alberta
and how the peculiar birdsong of the tundra swan once set your
spirit free

Write of the struggles of your fathers
of the linguistic imperatives that shackle you and keep you from
articulating the particularities of non-heteronormative and
alternative identities

Write of the land and how it’s shaped you
of the small things like the footsteps you hear when you wish
to hear nothing and the incomprehensible strangeness of being
and exactly what you have gleaned

Write of the day that you lost her
of the day that you lost him and everything collapsed into
emblems and metaphors and similes and other tropes blending
into the cruellest and sharpest unit of metonomy

Write of the city that you left there
of the Winnipeg half-jokes, the myth-making memos, the spray
paint and solvents, the cult of new money, the rebuild and letdown,
the angst of personae, the collective of lonely

My friend is 71

I’ve been working in the hotel painting
I don’t get paid
With paper and shit like that
It’s just me and a friend painting
My friend talks about dying everyday
All the time
He has a plan when he’ll do it
He doesn’t want to deal with court or rent or brain surgery or immobility
He bought and sold motels
Lost money in pyramid schemes
After work we smoke cigarettes and talk
He says he wants to drink my cum so he can take my DNA with him
My friend is 71
All this is a lie except the cum drinking DNA part

Japan

I walked into the water and started swimming
I thought I would swim forever

My wish was to swim to Japan
and eat fish that contains deadly toxins
unless it is scrupulously prepared

and then visit the Buddhist temples
to bow down at a family shrine at the side of the road
to eat rice with the family

But I felt myself sinking

I don’t know how he got there
My sister’s boyfriend threw a carry on me
His hand massaged my breast as he towed me
It was unpleasant
but it was foreplay
so it was compulsory

I knew all about compulsory
from my Olympic training

He dragged me onto the sand
Each grain of sand was a finely honed razor
I already knew that the world was made of razors

If you explored the molecular structure of anything
you discovered it was made of razors

My brain is made of a billion razors
Each neuron is a razor
Each synapse is a strop

I wanted to scream at my sister’s boyfriend:
Why are you torturing me?
but couldn’t get any words out

He gave me mouth-to-mouth
I thought that meant we were married
without violence
I sat up and vomited in the sand

My sister came over with a child’s shovel and covered it up
The shovel was bright green
It turned into a mystical frog
and squirmed in her hands
She shrieked and dropped it

The mystical frog peed in the sand
and froze everything for eternity

Ghostology

Your cupboard is not a ghost. Your lamp is not a
ghost. Your television is not a ghost. Your electric
toothbrush is not a ghost. The wind through the
open window is not a ghost. The reflection in the
mirror is not a ghost. The minivan in the street is
not a ghost. The doorbell is not a ghost. The man
in your closet is not a ghost. The man in your
living room is not a ghost. The man in your
bathroom is not a ghost. The man in your kitchen
is not a ghost. When this man puts his hands on
yours, they are not ghost hands but real hands.
When this man leans over in the middle of the
night and says, I love you, they are not ghost
words but real words. You are afraid.

The White Poet

The White Poet wanders through whiteness. He
considers the things that are white. The streets
are white. The hills are white. The moon is white.
The shadows are white. The vacant lot where
children are fighting in the rain is white in his
thoughts. In memory, his mother’s hands are
white and stained with white dirt. Everywhere he
turns, a policeman stands behind him, flashing
his white flashlight into his White Poet Eyes.

selvedge jean is the highest level of jean

obviously i want to sit in your tub
i want to be soaking my raw selvedge jeans in there
i want to be reading something you recommended
i want to be listening to something i recommended
i want you to be reading too
i want you to be on the toilet, sideways, leaning back on the wall
i want you to be cross-legged
i want your legs to be long in your boy shorts
i want them to exude mystery and shyness
i want your arms to be uncrossed
i want your breasts to strain against your striped cotton shirt
i want them to exude huge, disastrous power
if you are wearing glasses, i want your hair to be done
if you are licking your lips, i want it to be audible
i want to watch you in my peripheral vision, picturing pinknesses
i want you to not think of me at all
i want to get out of the tub
say ‘my denim is done’
look at you blankly
i want you to finish your passage
look at me blankly
i want to walk up to you and uncross your legs in a yank
kiss you with a dangerous force
drain my lust in you
fuck you right there on the toilet seat
denim still on
you figure out how

The mime has stigmata

and that is a problem.
He is not even Catholic
but considered converting.

The wounds first appeared
during a Thursday night show.
It was not Holy Thursday,

but it was wholly sold out.
Though no photos exist,
the memory is fixed:

his palms flat and up,
blood pinking white gloves.
Everyone knew it was not

part of the performance:
his routines include sandwich
making, window washing,

cello playing. No
violence. Afterward, he
burned the gloves, washed

his hands with such force
they were redder than blood.
Someone called the bishop.

He hadn’t worn gloves
in years, asked if he could
borrow the mime’s,

who said he’d burned all
his pairs, convinced cloth
had given him the rash.

They stood together
on the empty stage,
burning beneath the light,

concluding that pantomime
was an essential ingredient
for most professions.

should they may
be could you would
she called me up in
may and thought
she should but I would
not. can I may

could you might
then we fight —

he said should she
would she could but
which they might
and she could see there
only what she looked at
which was not there.

from Fugitives of Speech

the trees fanned out around Mallender
as Sheer had described them
during his concussion-induced study session
in the woods behind his house

here too the branches wavered without the weight
of their leaves Mallender couldn’t focus
his eyes upon them maybe they weren’t entirely trees
too ephemeral milky black a few shades thick enough
not to be pure apparitions more like a neuron
diluted in the foggy ocean of the sky
the base of the tree
unconnected to the very earth
each tree
flickered in tune to the wind
which drew Mallender
plodding in one direction
a feint blue light
pulsed through the persuasively permanent
darkness ahead

when Mallender came to a circular clearing
he arrived also with the knowledge that his journey
had been long and full of peril
though he hadn’t experienced that interim
must have been a leap in time

as a jellyfish’s body fluctuates in the sea
translucent blue vespers shimmered in the area
cleared of trees

metal appendages detached from a body
that remained connected by the pale blue aura
it all floated in the shape of a body making an X
a body mid jumping jack not unlike Davinci’s
Virtuvian man that Mallender’s mother had on bookplates
in her Audubon books from the 70’s

the entire body spun making the blue fan out
into a sphere perfect except
for slight delineations call them borderlines
between each spinning section of the body

The legs separated from the sphere
and came at Mallender like a sliced blue tomato

the blue disappeared into the legs and immediately
the metal could take any shape it wished
not as fluid as T-1000 but more imaginative
and without the one-track-violent mind

the living metal sliced itself into silver byzantine halos
hovering slowly and developing wings
the accoutrements of angels without bodies
filling but not overwhelming the grey sky

the arms next detached themselves
from the still spinning
but increasingly piecemeal sphere

in front of Mallender they became a lathe and spun
and carved themselves into an obelisk bearing the hexagram
Mallender had cast for himself so recently
not just an obelisk but a sort of chimney shrouding the sky
with another sky from grey to green to hazel

next the head lowered itself to Mallender
the hair spread out as it had before at Whitney Park
rivers untangling from each other below
the half angels and golden brown sky
not simply rivers arbitrarily distributed
they spelled out words in luscious cursive
which Mallender could not read
though he knew the message vital to him
riverwriting show me the riverwriting he yelled

in response the final segment the torso approached him
the metal condensed itself into a chrome pomegranate
bursting open
the seeds floating in air sprouting into
blue roses
those wilting as fast as they bloomed
into blue herons that paced
around Mallender
and trumpeted silently into the air

the vision for all its chaotic happenings
maintained an un-earthly rhythm
the herons’ awkward steps always in line with one another
the halos spun around Mallender with the rhythm
of a torsion pendulum on an anniversary clock
the rivers sang
and in a flash without thunder
Diana stood before Mallender
just her the hazel sky and the trees
she was looking at him with respect but not love
as she had at Havland pond

from the trees still inky black
came a single note an ah
voices of the young and old male and female
it helped release Diana’s nature from this machine
Diana dispersed as the sky had from the obelisk
the trees turned green the chrome steel body
stood at attention with a blank stare on its flawless featureless face
but still Mallender’s affections for this husk of metal and energy
did not change

Pulling the Sun

Once, drunk on an island in the south of France
at a dinner party
a woman read my cards.
She didn’t speak any English.
Simone’s mom translated for me.
I wavered on a precipice
watching her lay each card down.
I looked unhinged into her low stream of French.
Her voice was amazing.
Full of calorific heat. She pushed coals
around my feet, pounding, her teeth
crooked in a fabulous smile.
Her hands were soft, multiplying rapidly,
gesturing through a veil
of incredible wine.
She set a video camera beside us.
She was making a documentary.
I felt like a female Great White shark
mating in the near-soporific effect
of a feeding frenzy.
I was riding a tiny horse
out of a sunflower field.
The whole feng shui of the house fluttered
around me. The sun sunk and died in my arms.
It’s something to do with your mother, she began.
And a bone-china teacup floated
in front of face and cracked
mid-air—
there’s too much at stake.
The body, the brain,
the liquor of the past
pouring in like a tonic.
In the middle of nowhere
the brain is more meaningful.
Some days I forget where I am.
I feel nothing. I know
nothing.
I watch the sea admonish the people within it.
I’m enormous from eating
in rooms of attractive European conversations
I can’t partake in.
Simone like a ten foot tall Amazon warrior holding my hand through the void.
I could hear a phone ringing off in the distance.
A swift single shot. Everything was hitting
home. Knowledge was
idiosyncratic. Somewhat retained.
The woman was the new girlfriend of the uncle.
He stood a little on the side, fatalistic, troubled
when his face wasn’t in league with hers.
He didn’t get along with the family.
The mother had just died suddenly the weeks before.
The girlfriend walked around
like a black haired shaman, nonplussed with a camera.
Mid-fifties in dark red lipstick.
We communicated all night via outside sources.
When she looked at me
I wanted to be cast down
into the subjective feeling of helplessness.
I was reading a lot of Yeats at the time.
Imagined that I would bicycle lusciously through the South of France.
But my hair stood up on my arms in the wind.
A hologram in the middle of a culturally rich environment.
It was a kind of foreign breakdown.
An untranslatable doom.
She pulled The Sun,
enveloped in accurate lunacy.
My lips were stained various shades of mauve.
I couldn’t see myself as something
living. I was intellectually outside of the conversation.
She spoke long melodic prophecies, thus interpreted.
She hit a nerve.
I eventually passed out on the settee.

THE LAST FIVE CENTURIES WERE UNEVENTFUL

The last five centuries were uneventful
the stitches that melted
from my ripped open cunt
tasted like mint and changed color
when I peed
I peed with the door open
because this is bounty
the universe has a fat lip
we put every cock from China
inside it and splash
in the slippery oriental jizz
you feel like seppakuing because your butthole is unretractable
you feel like seppakuing because your butthole is too determined
you feel like seppakuing because one time a man was rejected by a woman
she said, You’re creepy
and he got a gun
and wrote a manifesto
against bikram yoga
against women with great bodies
against women who want to have babies with other men
against women who want to have babies with men who are not allowed to be part of their lives after they have the baby
against women who know they are good looking
against women who have died for knowing they are good looking
against women who loved women and mocked men for jerking off to the idea of a woman touching a woman
I have jerked off to the idea of a man
jerking off to the idea of a woman touching a woman
and that idea bought a samurai sword from ebay
and seppakued
I wanted to have a baby
I wanted to carry my baby to term
I wanted to have milk oozing from my tits
I wanted to have bigger tits than the tits I have now
I wanted to drink my own milk and breastfeed myself
I wanted to breastfeed my mother and tell her I love her
I wanted to miscarry a baby by falling down the stairs
I wanted to toast to my own miscarriage with breast milk from my tits
I wanted to have bigger tits without having a baby
I wanted you to tell me I’m the reason why the world is going to hell
I wanted to give you the hell you said I was capable of creating
no one really cares but you do and I do
we take the relics of entire countries
and trash them in the sea
when we dive for the past
we find unearthed thoughts
the fertility of what you think could one day be
is just the honest desire to be remembered after you’re dead
so much that you focus on how to be great
so much that you focus on how to be new
so much that you forget to love your father
so much that you forget to love your mother
so much that you forget to love your children
so much that you forget to love your pets
so much that you would forsake the barren godforsaken twice
farted sea which gave rise to the queen and her queenly farts
and her princely kingdom
where she once told you and I and our children to fear everything
and we did
and we lived like that
and we still live that
and we still know nothing
hiding our big dreams in the invisible centers of roses
where we feel big and round and ready
and ready
and ready
and ready
and ready
and ready
and ready
I’m ready
I’m ready
I’m ready
I’m ready
I’m ready
I’m ready
I’m ready