So here's a new poem.
This is the one my wife told me to read.
She said, read that love poem where you have the worst
line you've ever written.
And you'll see where the worst line comes in, but it's so bad,
I kind of like it.
Poem is called "Sclera."
You know it's sclera is?
It's the whites of the eyes.
And, you know, anthropologists--
it's big question in anthropology,
what came first, language or the whites of the eyes?
It seems that whites of the eyes have
to almost precede the latter.
And so, there's little epigraph.
"It is likely Homo ergaster is the first human ancestor who
had visible sclera, whites of the eyes,
identical to those in modern humans."
"You share the kill, fingers circling a thigh bone
shattered open.
One hand sucks the copious marrow, the other hovers,
then strokes the still nascent chin of your mate.
Strokes and strokes, an all divine moral, you are guttural
whisper, tinctures of noun, and verb pharynx
a work in progress.
But the eyes are besnowed and watchful.
They dart and waver, then fix into consummating gaze.
Sclera, aglow and glossy, is multipurpose 24 pound,
wherein slow iris and russet pupil
stalk their text more ancient than Runic or Linear B.
O my beloved, by the windows of the soul, we fuck.
We throw the curtains open, bodies
viscid with the polleny mourn, and how these eyes are locked."
Yes, it's the windows of the soul, we fuck.
Felt like it.
[LAUGHTER]