W 177th & Broadway
All night you eyed the man I wanted to be;
my jaw flexed tight. Anger slipped into
desire. Easily he would rise. Easily you would
disperse, pleasure made into light:
what you want under him,
I put on to amuse— I, your worked
supplicant. Yes, love is looking away.
My desire greened in your dismissal. Was
technicolor and twilight-made and never
turning off. The city air hung humid
above our charade. What need I could fill:
to transubstantiate, to unravel?
Chiaroscuro
Whereas I come into the into to talk with my shadow.
From you I’ve not hid my face.
For in the morning I make, and am made by you:
beautiful projection, boy in the mirror, boy in my mind.
I separate my flesh from my flesh to become more
like you, to drown in your holdings
The Meaning of Life
The female bedbug says, “Fuck a hole through my stomach.”
The male bedbug says, “I have just the tool for the job.”
The female duck says, “Fuck me around and around and around.”
The drake says, “I have just the corkscrew for the job.”
The male bonobo says, “Fuck my wife. And then me. Then your wife, and her lover, which is me again.”
The male praying mantis says, “Fuck my brains out.”
The hermaphroditic flatworm says, “The thought of wrestling with you makes me super hard.”
The other hermaphroditic flatworm says, “The thought of wrestling makes me super hard, too. And sharp.”
It’s all fun until someone gets sperm in the bloodstream and has to lay the eggs.
The female trout says, “I will fuck the river.”
The male trout says, “I will fuck the river in the same place and not stick around to see what happens.”
The female angler fish sings, “Here comes the sun, little darling.”
The male angler fish sings, “I’ll stop the world and meld with you. Permanently.”
The whiptail lizard sings, “Like a virgin” and drops offspring whenever she pleases.
The male gingko tree entreats, “O Wind, willest thou bear my fuckspores over to that thin little sapling?”
The thin little sapling giggles, “Stop it, Wind, that tickles!”
The male porcupine thinks, “This better be worth it.”
“Let’s fuck tomorrow,” suggests the panda.
“Or,” suggests the other panda coyly, “we could fuck the day after tomorrow.”
The young chimpanzee has his mouth full, fellating himself, a hormonal Ouroboros.
All around, the bacteria scratch their itches and divide, moaning trillions of tiny moans, which is why silence is never quite silent.
Over the course of its lifetime, the leopard slug composes with its slime trail the following: “One
day I will dangle from a branch entwined with my beloved, a double helix slick and tightening, and the two translucent penises emerging from our heads will entwine as well, forming a pale globe across which our mutual seeds will travel like warm ocean currents.”
The dragonfly whispers, “Let’s do it midair, because when I come I want to be touching nothing but you.”
The luna moths do not whisper to each other, lacking mouthparts, coupling urgently as they perish on a diet of wind.
The moon, round and inanimate, looks down on them with pity. They cannot apologize for the way they are shaped, or the way they want the hurt.
The horse says, “Fuck me bareback.”
The oyster says, “Fuck me raw.”
And the cat says, “Fuck me doggy style.”
