The White of Sacre Coeur
Against a Blue Parisian Sky

The white of Sacre Coeur against a blue Parisian sky
marks passageways that blur whenever we enter this city’s face.
By our bankrupt dreams, we hold onto starkness,
remember its eyes, and dine in them.
But I’m of little use to persons undercover, hidden
in these buildings’ recesses, the corners of smiles,
eyes bulging behind curtains, looking for just about anything
that will pull the cork, boil the blood
of displeasure tightened by the work of pleasing bosses
and each neighbor whose fence moves a little closer
each year, moaning to stroke the package
left nightly on my doorstep of a milked liquid, bottled and tied
with a ribbon the color of fairy dust.
They, a secreted them, would have us die to erase that glow.
Mostly at the height of moon’s night do her shady limbs
work across the properties and lawns they guard with their lives,
whatever these are, whatever they become, however they burn.
For your listening pleasure, I turn as old as I was born,
stroke the bumpy skin of our whisky illness, manage the pyramids
we’ve never climbed or crawled within,
enter the Morocco never wrapped by your feet
kissing pebbles, visiting your veins, telling you a mythology
that includes how we are the sores of hope riding
the backs of tomorrow, mountain peaks we climb
and shout the names of those to come and those who’ve been,
each of us who happens to be the world’s greatest against
every shade of sky, and every sky that cradles our dying heads, still living.

Why The Wind

Goes in with
Complete androgyny—
O fuzzy city,
Dear communal map,
Are you made of calcium
or fire-based fifty proof?

Don’t know a hawk from
a handsaw? I’ve got a bottle
that dances long
after night falls,
the falling that never begins.

Why the wind
is air thick with tongues
that makes a hole
into what gets spoken
requires hallucinating
pieces we’re missing,

Or not built with, I cry
to remember what I saw
in the very ether
we disappear in.
We are lava-like,
and above all,

We are blowing
red earth at what once
was a sleep issue,
now predatory ventures
carry us toward each other,
little bleating sexless lambs.

The Destiny You Choose
is the One You Live Through

Back in this province, we’ve got restaurants, violins,
land digs to deal with. We go right wing with equal
rights only for property owners.
Make a bid. Build a private chain gang industry.
Suck the tuna from their tides,
rip the salmon apart midstream. Color their flesh pink.
Turn what is not only corn into grazing land.
Make cows eat maize. Cage chicken beaks. Sell onward masses.
My intestines clang with confectionary histories
that spill apart, muddying other shores.
Such domestic matters couldn’t be more replete with envy.
Hold out for a house in the country,
a two-bedroom city retreat-gone-microbe, off the grid,
post-lesbian wedding. Spend water but acknowledge:
scandals are only scandalous when we’re invested in them.
When the world melts its edges, we’re eyes on an embroidered center.
Give me meat, give me U.S. flesh on a stiff neck bone,
sweep my sleepy glances to the side of the tracks:
I am known for my peripheral marginalia, crucifixion complex,
among other familial clutter. Roman Jakobson, you say?
No. Viktor Schlovsky tearing the seams.
Claude Cahun pushing pamphlets amidst German soldiers
that smile, tip their hats to the Jewess and her “sister”.
They burn photographs of gravity and well-enforced plans.
They turn products of suicide, marching battles into dresses,
pass their lives in drag, away from habit, beloved intrepid rabbits.

Note: Font size reduced at author's request
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