With Great Fanfare I Present You the Key to the City and This Is What Happens
apparently my body is a city
like all cities it was once new and small and made sense
like all cities it evolved over the ages
sprawl and addition
accumulation of choices that made sense at the time
a history’s worth of whispers
deep inside the city are cobblestones
archways
narrow alleys
I’m difficult to navigate
yet you stride with great confidence
as though you’ve been here before
know exactly where you’re going
at the center of the city a park
in that greenspace a tree
ancient black trunk
spider-limb and silhouette
the tree bears a single piece of ripe fruit
the fruit is my heart
do not pick it I say
but you say picking fruit keeps the tree healthy
you slice it into thirds
drizzle each slice with honey
one for the birds you say
one for you to carry on your journey home
you hand the last slice to me
say eat and I do
For So Long, I Was Foolishly Proud of The Scar on My Thumb
I wanted to be a man
until I met enough men
to know better. The pain
of understanding that arrives too late
is the teeth of handsaw
against skin, a mistake
while dragging away limbs
after a storm; I rend
my flesh like wax,
a wound that’s worse
when I look at it. My own blood,
the white of my bone
exposed. Bleached, dying
coral. Ashed-over desert,
one dry lakebed
after another. I thought
I was helping. I thought
I was restoring order. I have
no excuse for the damage
I have done. Men are killing
the world. My skin will heal.
Will knit a pale contrail
across the smaller sky of my body.
Will still be the skin of a man.
Nice
is what we say to each other when words fail —
nice. That was nice. This has been nice. Nice.
What percentage, do you suppose, of people,
upon the occasion of their 69th birthday,
celebrate with a 69? Surely each person
thusly intertwined believes
in that wet-hot moment that their play
on words, their particular entanglement
of pun and pleasure must be unique
on all the planet. Is it disappointing
when you’re not the first to have an idea?
You’re not even the only person
right now with your face buried
in the flesh of someone you love
or love enough, at least, to share
this brief time. We say it
after weddings and funerals: that was
a nice service. So unoriginal,
this fussing we do over love and death,
hunger and grief, but original’s
not the point. Our bodies
were born for this. To crave
and end. When someone my age dies
after an illness I wonder
about the last time they had sex.
I wonder about grief that has time
to rise that way, slowly, the body
growing used to its inevitable end, not
acceptance or anything like that, no,
but understanding, maybe. I wonder
about their spouse, how it feels
to watch such loss approaching
like the world’s slowest
most terrible train
and then when it does arrive
it tornadoes past with a roar
and rush and then even then
despite so much warning
you must stand there
as if at a suddenly emptied station
staring out at empty tracks
thinking, I thought — I thought
there was more time. I thought
we’d have more. What was it like,
the last time they touched,
this couple? In my imagined version
of their love, it’s all gentle
and grieving, full of awareness
of the body’s fragility but I hope
I’m wrong. I hope
it was sweaty and exhausting.
I hope it erased the world
for a moment. I hope it was
more like a first time than a last,
and here I guess I’m betraying
my own desire for feeling new,
for the sense that my body
is an island being discovered
by a shipwreck survivor
so eager for solid ground
and sustenance, so thirsty
for fresh water — I’m being
ridiculous but that’s the point,
I want it to be ridiculous
the way it was when we
first broke the rules together,
caught up in the miracle
that is mouth and finger,
touch and twist and nothing exists
outside of these bodies,
this room, this slaking
until we can barely breathe,
until the only tense is present,
until we look at each other
in shyness at the abandon,
how we just revealed
so much about ourselves
and now here we are,
uncovered, reaching
for language to share
but words fail, that’s what
I’ve been trying to say,
so, darling, come, stand wordless
with me at this window
and let us hold each other
and gaze at the world,
the morning rising,
the day that can go on without us.
