The Brooklyn Rail

There is no love interest in these modern wars.
Gertrude Stein

When he deflates, horribly flat, with sticky crinkling noises, I peel his body from other parts of
his body, probe with my pinky, squeeze with index and thumb, put my mouth to his valve hole,
breathe him fat again.

I punch. He hisses. He’s mine, and I sock him. He flops backward, jerks upright, ballasted by sand
in his sack-bottom, filled with my breathed air.

I punch and I punch him. I dance on my toes like a boxer, lean to let him hit me in the face with his
face—not hard. He crumples about the ears, tapping me. I swim in my make-believe anger. His
sifty sand shifts when I shove my hands under him. Like Susie the color guard carrying her flag I
rest him against my pelvis. Shove him out to tumble on his dumb head.

He rights himself the instant he hits. I dive at him, we fall together, roll, I lie full on the floor, load
his weight on my belly.

Did you hear the wind last night punch our pear tree, beat and bend it till it thrashed its blossoms
in white suds at the window, at the emptiness in the other direction? Marriage, inventory, what?
You? America? Hello?