Strange Beach

SIMULACRUM

There wasn’t love but there was what love becomes—
(sheet-wrinkle)(skin-dune)(arm-ropes lassoing
our neck flesh with push-and-pull—, equal amounts;
the hurt convincing its shape is false, the relation:
the recorded moment (he likes to record) not true)—

Then the film buffering … the unfinished triangle
your body sculpts on top of his.
Frustration. Yes. Rejection. Oh yes.
The colon’s ring hammering, waking up (not again, not
tonight). Tight. Loose. Bloodless (for now), dragging
a palm across the brick wall—now
blood (for now) streaming from you like scripture—:
spit of him landing atop your eyelid, that puddled need.

And there is freedom, there is intention to break your back in half
and call it what-you-asked-for, what your separateness
will not allow. Rattle of wooden slats (indentations
in the linen), this body you are finally inside of
being moulded into the cushion’s canvas
by what desire has given him permittance to do tonight,
tonight only—

He is not a perfect fit and that is perfect. He will not
stay the night. He will not stay. Hard
night. Leaking night. No fine point, needled stars.
The sky is a masculinity. He starts the car.
Likes to be called daddy. Needs to be called
something, anything.
There is your obligation, your obliging. Call it
gratitude. Be
grateful. Give
thanks. Give.

ANIMAL SONG

The country lights are real upon the stampede of pigs that fuss
and bisect around an obstacle of straw.
Grass, newly cut, holds the pettitoes’ rushed
imprint, doesn’t let go, cannot fetch as the pigs
split themselves on (choice entering with a dirt
finish, odorous, rank) a scarecrow in a field.

Where he’s been sewn up, as in repaired, I can see it.
Stacked lesions in his back that with training
vertically thread a new spine, the underwritten narrative
of sun setting over the pigs’ unified face. Collectivity.
Wish. Throw. Brightness. And yet it takes a dark
to know a dark. Unquantifiable quickness.

There are those we let have sway over us.
There are those who innately have it—There. Go.
With your feet. Into the designated pen. I can follow
and be quiet. Weakening, then truly weakened.

How many steps between rest and defeat until the flame
is what it always was: a symbol
for where the slaughter ends. Red-blue pool
of drained life swirling
under, refusing purple, refusing memory’s
tainted leakage—And passing through
the body like an event. When does it become
trespass? It’s Tuesday. He is coming
over to demonstrate squirm’s meaning: to writhe inside
the self. How even the bones tangle, country light
fading the room at the same angle
we had thought it departed—

FUMBLED SONNET

Ocean—though from below
you can’t quite tell; below,
not in it. What’s the saying? It is impossible
to be on the outside
of your situation the way cure
is yoked like a blue ember
to diagnosis—Okay,
I’ll say it: the new lover
must fuck the old one
out of memory. Pressure, point
of contact, all this
they decide, though speed
is of the utmost
importance when it comes to
time’s bold effects: heaven
of the body smudged like a ghost
losing its yell because it gets one more day
as matter on earth—what would you say
differently if that thing
you thought was dead
could matter once more? Brightly,
the blade’s lustere blinds
whom it has decided
to renovate; you
know nothing about the
feeling but that your abdomen
is, after all this thinking, bleeding,
swelling with blue light—

(…)