The Brooklyn Rail

Blood Rhymes With Marrow

The marrow boys
Resuscitated
All of my hopes.

Their arrows
Elucidated
My dreams’ favorite loads.

His—and his
Bicep never cloys;
But his pecs have crusaded.

Sun streams a blue
Tattoo for emphasis;
Its rhythm breaks blood like bread.

The tattoo—
Sticks itself like glue
And shinier than horse hooves.

It lodges in his blood
More snugly than lead—
At remove from the wit his wry wit reproves.

For rainbow, read
Slut at the parapet;
Then “the untranslatable ice” cracks that heat.

Happily Imbued By Influence

Blow—blow—blow your boat;
Render the stream
The purest pork, the pearliest ponk.
I look at a willow
While dreaming mitotic bonk.
Its leaves brush my
Shoulderblades; they feel like cream.
Sweet green cream—please ream
My throat;
Make me the palace
Encrypts your load.
Dear radar, please
Sink like a fishing leader.
Cream me like eggs in a
Bowl with a beater.
Make me as an image—
But do it harder:
I want the scrimmage.
I want you to laugh,
Which laughter rhymes
With anticline and gaff.
Hey mystic blue bird, shake
Your grey retrices till my reticula
Can’t do anything than break.
Green—bird—cream larded by deftest laughter—
I like you in the morning
Like bats hang from the rafter.
Our mitosis turns to clabber.
This microphone sosies adder.
With a and with a microphage
I do so much madder
Than any anger and especially rage.
I do like fresh crushed olives,
Or acetylene.
I loose your liege.
I make up my marrow
Like it’s under siege.
I make myself believe I’ve broken
One of your bones;
And I slurp the marrow.
A bat would simply bite.
But I smack the red creamy
All over my lips.
A bat would merely bite:
I go for the place
Manufactures your blood.
I go for the source, not a nip of circulation.
If I do this in the cold
My supper might waft.
A bat would just flit down—
Bite me beneath a croft.
I think I’d like to dress
Your cracked bone in apple pressed to oozing—
Make sweet the mineral tang.
But I would never
Eat a man like he’s air.
I eat him like he’s man,
Man made of meat.
He has no reason to beware:
I look harmless—
Harmless and charmless.
I would never eat his biceps;
He will not go armless.
I would never do this at night,
Especially never when the moon
Shines very bright like a
Stove just before it comes to a scorch.
I would never do this on his porch—
Too domestic: I want him
To sleep but not scared for his life.
Obviously, just
Because you’re not scared
Does not mean he won’t die.
The less you wonder—
The more you’ll scry.
And whence shall I wander
Once I’m through with this violence.
I know—I know—I’ll go to the tow
Path; I’ll throw a rock at a swan.
I’ll throw a rock at a swan, while I repeat
The name Erik Hobsbawm.
I hope I miss.
I miss but I did try
To plink his handsome rivet.
Let me kiss you on your lower lip;
Let me whisper in your ear like a Caspian
Tiger as it moans from deadly wound.
As it moans from deadly
Wound, and as it did
I think the marrow crooned.
All of this—this
Unspeakable physis—
Comes to articulate I have waged
The colder war;
Tarsal not heart
Tropes its core—
Arsenal not tarot
Wags its smart.
Thus blood turns into light,
Light as an anther—brighter than lantern;
It rises like a cell,
A drippy balloon.
It rips the sky in two
And too soon,
Till it falls and the cells
Smack him out as by a gold ball:
Not gold—iron alloyed with titanium,
Done up in gold-leaf.
Thus I have no choice; I hot-hot from a grave:
I had to seek shelter, like a bear a cave—
Like a snake an abandoned tunnel
Made by wombat’s diligent lave.
Nor did I deserve that.
I’ve lied, and lie
Interred—
Permanently wintered.
No stone shuts, like a lid.
This grave never stops eating; I
Turn finer than a pile of lime.
I turn—turn—turn—and never burn.
Dead, I dream myself dead:
Meditating on a bed where the Granta used to flow.
It drowned my pile; it drowned my ghost,
And told me its waters’ disappearance is
None of my concern; but I think its ghost
Underestimates my concern.

Dressed By Sorrel

They clap and clap and clap.
The men on stage turn to meat.
The stage snaps their bones like
Bilious snaps a beak.

This is not what you
And exactly what you seek.
The claps scratch the air until
It smokes—curls off in a reek.

At the edge of their performance—
Death’s foreplay posies
Capricious gaunt concordance,
Ordinance ripe for riparian sosies.

The river makes a rip
Like a raptor cracks a spine.
The book docks us at Piraeus,
Rips fish off their line.

Mirror—mirror—
Carded-tail calling-cards caul—
Arcadian carpals haul
Meat headlong and to beer.