The Brooklyn Rail

THE BREASTPLATE

When war begins to rain on the swell and on the beaches
I will go to meet him armed with my face
Coiffed with a heavy sob
I will lie flat on my stomach
Atop the wing of a bomber
And I will wait
When the cement begins burning the sidewalks
I will follow the bombs’ routes amidst the grimaces of the crowd
I will stick to the rubble
Like a tuft of hair on a nude
My eye will escort the elongated contours of desolation
The dead blazing with sun and blood
Will be silent by my side
Nurses gloved in skin
Will wade in the soft liquid of human life
And the dying will burn
Like castles of straw
The colonnades will sink
The stars will bleat
Even woolen slacks will vanish
Without the giant space of fear
And I’ll rinse my bare teeth purple with dithyrambic ecstasy
Generous hysterics
When war begins to rain on the swell and on the beaches
I will go to meet him armed with my face
Coiffed with a heavy sob

BIOGRAPHY

The wise mists of autumn foliage
The lilacs the whims the tea of English nurses
The desert that wriggles behind the screen
The brother we marry
The grandfather we bury
The child that loses their teeth
The cobra we caress
And who smiles
The murders of velvet and cream
The musical whispers
Of us on our knees
The parents who sleep in the canyon of night
Milky sighs slaps with iron wings skeptical mouths dilemmas
The death of the husband who does not walk yet
The mountains with hiccups of snow approaching
and receding
With each misspelled letter of the child who begs
And who balances between the frozen leaves and their thirteenth year
Sure of their power and the rise of love
Sure of their power
And tireless death

BARBARIC REGIONS

My bed spins across meadows rooms and dusks
To the green promises of storms and logics
traffic jams I lose my footing between the sheets
Sucked in by the mire
Silent stubborn like the child we call
And know is not
There anymore
Pale like the suffering of the world’s only woman
Standing at dawn
He passes

I don’t want to live without you
That is all

LOT’S WIFE

We must expel Lot’s wife
Eat bread without salt
Without tears
Without her
Greedy open she flames
Sticky impaled on the dry foot of boredom
Absent Attentive to the throbbing of her vulva
she
YAWNS
Contrary to erotic violence
Death is contagious
She stakes her flag
A pot of blood crackles
Around her knees
We must mold the excrement
Lick the anus
Plunge the face into the bitterness of old age
Reap the wheat that ferments in the armpit
Know the breach that death combats
Rigid plant death in orgasm and shudder
Everything but nothing shouts the wife
Do not let me go
We must expel Lot’s wife
We must be normal