BIG PICTURE

I was looking at cats
on Instagram
and everything
that a girl ate in a day
when a pretty girl
called to pick me up:
Oh no I can’t, I said,
I’m a champagne glass
on a windowsill
perfecting stillness,
containing the sun like a picture,
I am a semi
colon coiled on the bed,
the light in the room is the past,
the door with a peephole
from which laughing strangers
come and go
is not an exit,
the green of the cricket
on the vine in the kitchen
has trapped me this morning;
I try to write about beauty;


Everyone knows about terror;
When the white falls out
of the wall
I pick it up with hand gloved
In a plastic bag
And flay it—
I drop it in a pan and flambé
it, and I eat it, I eat it,
that’s how I obtain
A heart so white,
and I video myself eating it
like a girl on Instagram
thinking of what else I will eat
today smiling and nodding
at the camera
 

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ONE ARM

When I come home from shopping, I find him cutting up his beloved books. Because I love you,
he says. The next time I leave the house, I leave my arms with him. One hand, mottled blue,
writes on the wall, the other disobeys. Back from the store I find one arm has grown a body, all
torso no legs no head. My beloved is already attached and cries as I shovel a hole in the
backyard. It’s been a long time since I could sleep, even with my one good arm cleaning the
house, I cannot be at ease. He can’t sleep either, he’s distraught, pasting his precious pages to a
box—it’s my birthday. I’ve peeked—beneath the lid is a new tongue. It is not the one I lost. This
one is more like a snake. At night I must keep it in a cage to stop it from wriggling into my
mouth. Beloved passes me in bed with a bowl of food. In the other room I hear a sharp hiss, a
clattering of bars. Then I love you, I love you, I love you, his soft, furred voice curling around it.
 

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RALPH LAUREN

What is night but a list of complaints· Mother arriving in crisp ralph lauren and tailored pants·
Her eyes Her mouth Her hands· They say when you cut into night· There is no fat · Only bone ·
What is night but reality blue edges blue clear blue covered in a body blue soul blue intolerable
questions blue wings in a cage blue a letter to lawrence ferlinghetti blue sending diptique candles
to a beloved professor both were already privately dead blue