A wild throw of jungle flowers
Deep in thought

Contrary to female
After prolonged exposure

correct distance
(the sole means of earning a living)

on a lawn in Westchester
monsters of style recline-

A work of art, ratted & sprayed
Over the smooth & poisonous river

Nonetheless, with Daddy's hand
The floodlights of survival

 
 
I solemnly swear not to reveal
his identity. Don't you mine

Our field of vision restricted
with an eight by ten format

Museums adhere to fairly
rigid definitions-

Fragile & delicate realities-
Everyone wants to leave a record.

The tree cocks its head.
Hands prayerlike in front of her genitals.

His, proud & available—
With great effort leaning toward annihilation

Our sexual activity sworn into secrecy.
Those with erections are expelled.

 
 
Matching bathingsuits
The same style advertised

in an A & S catalog yesterday
slightly more skin today.

Just like Robert
he wears a pair of glasses

along the jagged path of desire.
Doomed to address the world

as a parody of my baby monkey
drawn in Maybelline black

You'll be sorry, asked I
forever with a beauty mark

order inverted, these mad women
the cemetery in each face

 
 
Chemotheraphy
disrupts
our roast beef dinner—

An insurance agent,
wife, the tail
end of a chevy.

an awkward elf
child, ready
to break into dance

to speak gibberish,
ready to be sucked
back into the gradual

dimming
of the disembodied
third person—

 
 
What I look at—

two fabric roses—
is never what

I wish to see.
Skin as transparent

as the tissue
of my negligee.

Her left breast
propped upon

her index finger—
Unmemory leans

forward
in the shape

of a clock
at twelve forty-three

 
 
Tiny little woman in a teacup.
Under a Babushka
Who is woman? Who is man?

The un/predictable
Daver Liquor bottle,
the brim between twelve & two—

In the bathroom. In the making
She's a MAN. In the act
To know & to see

On the edge of the bed
of disrobing
or engaging

in intercourse.
A woman towers over her lover
Or lets a sword rest in her throat—

 
 
To master with
accumulation of detail

Our living room
crowded and worn

A housedress
bent over the flowers between

Rarely healing of their own accord
clearly outside the norm

Does it work, I wonder
the common ground cluttered so—

This book of photos marked
with the terrible hidden ordinary despair

$15 on the cover, twelve on the inside
And Gani gives it to me for only ten—