Two Poems
SPIT, SISTER
Raw intro:
In a bus station bathroom you
Hand me a diagram: how to separate meat from bone.
You say, “Nothing cuts deeper than your own hand.”
I change the subject:
“Have you ever noticed how we still sweat under our jackets even on fall days like this?”
I can smell the bulk of flesh on the collar of my sweater. My mouth fills with salt, profane.
You say, “Spit, sister.”
—
I can see your
Leopard print tattoo through a
Peephole in the stall.
Your water hits the toilet bowl as
My grip slips around a marker at the bottom
Of my bag.
In black Sharpie I leave a synopsis/vision:
“It’s a betrayal of instincts to despair in infertile ambience.”
If anybody knew us only by our hands,
They’d think we were twice our age.
—
With the last of the toilet paper you
Create a rough draft of a map
Based on Gemini logic:
contradictory, unpredictable,
moving through
synthetic elements of
infantile virtue.
At the end of an arrow, you’ve written “X MARKS THE SPOT.”
I want to tell you about the time when
I once believed I would grow up to be a
Wolf of a woman.
In this mirror, though, I am intolerant to confidence and all I can say instead is,
“Where do we go after this?”
SUPER MOON WEEKEND
In New York City I read your tarot cards.
They concluded that distance makes
The heart grow thunder.
You said you were changing your name to Corpus Christi;
We’d need to
Discard the bodies born of inbred temperament
to make it official.
—
“Gut me,” I said.
It was the start of a
Super Moon weekend,
just you, me, and a magic marker.
—
We’d heard the death of stars is
Brought on by song.
We thought: grindcore, necrothrash,
a swatch of black shadow and
asexual flatness.
On all fours, we dismembered:
superstitious rhythms,
worried timing,
nervous breakdowns.
—
We fell asleep at 6 a.m.:
Your tongue,
My dampness
On the floor,
Blank sheets and
Sour chords
Surrounding us.
—
Waking rushed us with
Diehard fanaticism.
I’d slept with bobby pins
In my hair;
They were now under
Your bare feet, lost in floorboards.
We woke with a
Corpse paint vocabulary,
Felt an untangling of the earth.
“Mars moves forward at midnight,” you said.
I blanched with the muscle spasm of inspiration,
repulsive in my agility.
