18. Love of the Body
I wear it like I read books, try it on, try each
segment, recite every inch of tendon and syllable.
It’s outside,
felt as if from outside,
and read out loud,
conjured in verbal nouns
and conjunctions.
Well-considered: strong or subtle,
a total statement
constant at every rising
with every injury healed.
Acting is limb action, lung function,
thought from a box of toys,
words like Roman columns.
Mold of a chin,
blueprint of a haircut.
They are fleshy emblems raised in the air
against more hair,
destiny in the nude under waving sunlight.
Born an observing eye,
a community of long surgical eyes, dividing.
Bulb nose, fish eyes, lines of lifted eyelashes
and lipstick lips. Those are pretty about you.
But look at your ribs,
look at those tender fatty spots now.
I can see them.
They bulge over your pants.
Nothing can keep you safe.
It is good when it feels good.
Relief here, not a futuring
but feeling, found on the earth and repeated,
name set in feet and inches,
but open on both ends.
One word from another:
a sticky buzzing web.
Wrong, it’s all wrong, tethered to thighs and testicles,
to boney shoulders on puppet strings.
Unpracticed muscle pulls tight in electric preparation,
littered signals abound.
Remember your poses,
pose like in the movies,
be prepared.
I was angry. His clothes came second hand,
a second hand blaze worn for me to finger.
Clothing, wearing, second hand being,
the busted container of a child in the open.
His grandfather asked me later, hurt:
“I thought you and me were OK?”
I was, am sorry today.
Gray black dirt webbed from my back
and I rolled it,
smeared, made a smearing walk and secret.
Laughter just then, behind me somewhere,
could hear their eyes roll all over,
long eyes on long back
taking note of every dirty adjective.
I have a mouth like a television.
It’s windowed: voyeurs see in,
see it from without,
and I look inside at the outside,
looking outside for where my throat ends,
for where the words stop pointing at me.
My throat and stomach eat themselves.
I would make it smooth, or smoother.
Would be hairless,
would be opaque and opulent.
Someone else entirely,
with a mirror.
Bristling and strong,
an impossible bloodless spectacle.
One. Reflecting, writing, not written.
I am publishing my book, Place Like Home (or), one poem at a time both here at The Junction and on my Medium page. Thank you for reading.
