This one is the last poem I wrote for the collection.
I got the phone call from Mr. Phillips.
I cannot call him Carl.
I got the phone call from Mr. Phillips, and I--
at a colony.
And when I went home, I went through all the notebooks,
and put out every last image and phrase
I could still respond to, and made a self-portrait.
"Self-portrait with Tumbling and Lasso."
"I'm drumroll and voyeur.
I am watermark and fable.
I am weaving the snarls of a wolf
through my hair like ribbon.
At my feet chisels and jigsaws.
I am performing an autopsy on my shadow.
My rib cage a wall, my heart a crack in a wall, a foothold.
I am tumbling upward--
a French acrobat.
I am judder and effigy.
I am Pompadour and splendid.
I am spinning on a spit, split in half.
An Apple.
In my mouth.
I know what Eve didn't know--
a serpent is a fruit eaten to the core.
I'm a massacre of the dreamers, a terracotta soldier waiting
for his emperor's return.
When I bow, a black fish leaps from the small of my back.
I catch it.
I tear it apart.
I fix the scales to my lips.
Every word I utter is opalescent.
I am skinned and orphic.
I am scarlet and threshold.
At my touch, a piano melts like a slab of black ice.
I am steam, rising, dissipating.
I'm a ghost undressing.
I'm a cowboy riding bareback.
My soul is whirling above my head like a lasso.
My right hand a pistol.
My left automatic.
I am knocking on every door.
I'm coming on strong, like a missionary,
and kicking back my legs, like a mule.
I'm kicking up my legs, like a showgirl."
My niece loves to tell me, you are nothing like a showgirl.
[LAUGHTER] I'm like, I know, I know, I know.
Poems can tell lies.
[LAUGHTER]
And she really gets mad when I say that to audiences.
Like, stop talking about me.
And I say, listen, if I'm buying your One Direction stuff,
right now, I can use a little snippet here and there.
It's a trade off.