Male. Twenty. San Francisco. I make art so you don't have to.
“Just yesterday, it seems to him, she stopped being pretty.”
John Updike, Rabbit, Run
“My Feet Know Exactly Where To Take Me.”
Original music by Chris Ames; .gif courtesy of George Eastman House.
Femur
Seed split.
The wet sponge.
Milky mildew hugging the soft curves
of the kitchen sink, in my gut.
Bends after bends and bend for me
gracefully, metallically. Hollow drum of the
water-spotted, meal churning
disposable me. Sputtering logic,
upheaval of fennel and
bay leaf and old wisdom.
In the slow dance of things I cannot retrieve.
The recology of
meals gone cold,
wine gone warm,
and you still gone.
Beneath this iron-cloth mouth
and rubber plugged throat,
something organic still crawls.
All wretching and no vomit.
Bleach of finger, root of ginger,
a tea-pot engagement
that took just as long to froth
as to whistle.
Yes Adam, this is another poem
about my vagina, but hark!
I am ugly slit.
I am splintering self.
I am warped wood.
I am animal.
I am the slow lull of
tectonic plates writhing
below your farmer’s feet
to reveal:
beautiful nothing, embrace it.
Shed your olive branch modesty
and echo into me.
Find comfort in reverberation, spoken mirror:
Eve, eye level, level eye, Eve
Bird rib.
Devil never even lived.
Dogma in my Hymn: I am God
Ring and middle finger,
a makeshift paint stir stick.
Piece through hardened film of
crusted untouched
for red, red, redder
second coat, third coat
glossy primer.
Mural of me.
My left nipple caught
between your canine teeth.
(But they all look canine)
I try to remember all
of the phases of the moon
while you first quarter
rip and waxing crescent
tear and new
grade.
It’s too much for me,
and from the split in my chest
a seed spills into
salty soil.
