I think there's two more poems from this book
and then two from the new project.
Is it good timing?
Yeah, take your time.
I want to hear more.
All right.
This next poem is a burning haibun.
The burning haibun is a form of my own invention
for folks who don't know.
A haibun is a traditional Japanese haiku form.
It is a prose poem followed by a haiku which
acts the capstone of it.
The burning haibun adds erasure into this.
So it's a prose poem, an erasure of the prose poem,
and an erasure of the first erasure down into a haiku.
It looks a little bit like this.
"My mouth is the mouth of a river.
Language is a slick tongue to think
how you can say thirst and mean, instead, desire.
But hasn't language always led the mouth back to what filth?
Between the teeth, there is a dozen paths to every me.
Do you follow?
I can say the oldest profession and mean
that I've made a living in the currency of hunger,
a career of making my body into water,
that I have heard so many names moaned in my ear,
and none of them are mine.
I suck a man's cock, and it tastes of copper.
He comes until empty, and I feel coins clinking inside me.
My body laments no guilt, except for my mother's shame,
though she does not know.
At night, I've pulled their memories
up like pills lodged in my throat, which my body will not
spasm away.
Each false name I have been fed rising the crook of my finger,
damp and dissolving a palmful of luminous silt.
Men are selfish with the truth, but each is clever as a clever.
See, every name hinges on the J, Jeff, Jack,
James, a simple sidestep from a name known best
as client and baptismal.
There are at least 100 words for how I have survived,
and so many of their names lead back to water.
Call me siren, nymph of the pavement.
We were taught desire is a flame,
but it is, instead, a river when I was starving.
I opened my mouth and said, 'Drink.'
[SNAPS FINGERS]
Language is a slick and mean desire between the teeth.
There's a profession in the currency
of hunger, a career of making a man's
empty coins inside my body.
Lament for my mother's shame as lodged in my throat.
False name I've been fed on, my damp and luminous self.
See, every name hinges on the simple sidestep.
How I have survived their desires, slain.
[SNAPS FINGERS]
There's currency in empty men.
I fed myself on their desire."
I just wanted to-- the two things that stuck out to me--
well, one thing, "the career of making my body into water."
And that's like a refrain where you talk
about this idea, this career.
But I just love that.
"Men are selfish with the truth."
I can't dispute that, you know?
It's great.
Great work.