"The Grave On the Wall."
This is a poem-- a part of a much longer series of poems--
all called "The Grave On the Wall," which, when I first
moved to Seattle, I was living in the apartment
of my co-worker and had this really horrifying experience,
repeatedly, where I would wake up in the morning
and I would see these enormous black forms
traversing the ceiling and traversing the walls.
And then I would try to go into different rooms
and I would continue to see these black forms
all over the apartment.
I told him this.
He said he had never experienced anything similar, which
made me feel very paranoid.
And I wasn't sleeping very much, but I don't attribute it
to that at all.
"The Grave On the Wall."
And I'm going to dedicate this to the folks at Casa Libre.
A lady is masturbating on the road
to the peopled river, 20 paces from where
the river is put upon.
Her fingers are small, the kinds of fingers
that can feel what other kinds feel - nothing.
To be bitten by a Bombardier, to be
bitten by a gentle Bombardier clit is long term.
To bite the mammal from the nest of calcium frozen to the wall,
chanting the particles out of joy.
She feels the joy within the wall.
Bitten by modest artillery, the mammal
wants to bite in response, not flinch for gross engorgement.
Straw children flash extremist monographs
against the wall to see how such a well-dressed threat might
stick.
At rest, I can feel the joy.
A lady is masturbating with an eagle on her shoulder.
The eagle is proud.
Dapper gut sparkling the open air,
bucking with the planetary hood of a cherry on deathwatch.
A kestrel, a hawk, and two eagles
sit on the lady's shoulders, burgers on their heads,
birds of instant fever, I know I love her,
whichever way love can be levered across the mattress
and the sand, air, air, here comes the air, black, black.
A lady with a trunk full of children tumbling open.
A lady is masturbating like it is all bean cakes.
She brought bean cakes into the rice
paddy for the eyeless musician to get ahead, head start.
She would do anything for a fellow musician,
really wash the beard off, reduce the box
to flattened bark, common breathing pushing back.
Some people say Jesus.
Yes, some sitting and pushing their intestines back in.
She cannot tell a man who is female with breasts is not
a woman.
She and her wife will be saved, entertained
in the crawling water.
From a circle of hair on the knuckle of her finger falls,
one, a cube of sugar, two, an iron filling
in the shape of a baby, and three, a fairy.
I trust you fully to carry us through the advent and chapters
of a radiant harm, the widening of your mouth in epilogue,
the ennobling of your tongue in index,
and the treading of your eyes at the vaporizing bib and wing.
The circle of hair is a single strand.
Unwound, it will stiffen gold into a stock
with less and less time.
Sit on my hand.
Feel it finalize itself in the sauce
of a small, falling apple.