Series: Conversari

As long as the lights
stay on, we’re stuck.
You can’t sprout wings
or rake me with sudden claws.
I can’t turn into
a storm-tossed tree
or an otter slippery as sin.

In the light, we are
smaller than life.
Our cries are nothing
but failed words
& our sighs & gasps
might just as well
have been emitted by some
tired engine.

Light always wants
to pin us down,
to make nakedness into
a mere absence of clothes,
a sleight-of-hand devoid
of actual magic.
It strands us
in our separate flesh.

Hit the lights
& let’s get out of
this walled garden!
Let our bodies return
to their original habitat.
There’s a rusty gate
at the end of the path,
& the whole dark forest
just beyond.

See Rachel’s photographic response, “At the junction.”

A college roommate once confessed
he fantasized about growing a vagina
on his shoulder: It would be

so handy, right there
whenever he needed to whisper
in its big wet ear.

John loved redheads & disliked feminists.
One woman informed me
he had “bedroom eyes.”

Where would the uterus go? I asked.
He laughed. It wouldn’t need one—
it would have me.

What about the pillow talk?
It would sing me to sleep, he said,
with its pulse of surf.

*

See Rachel’s photographic response, “Salty.”

“For years, I thought I hated children’s laughter.
I had no idea I was just hungry.”
—Healthy Choice ad

No children of my own, I thought
they all laughed that way—
teasing, cruel. Some poor scapegoat
forced to ingest god knows what.

Cleaning the dormitories, scrubbing
the blood from the shower walls,
my stomach contracts like a fist
around a blank coin.

Tomorrow, the soles of the state
inspector’s shoes will squeak
against spit-shiny floors.
He’ll hear nothing else. But today

I move backwards down the corridor
with the mop steering from side to side,
its wet locks dragging
an endless river of filth.

In response to twisted rib: “Secrecy imposed on the exposure of alleged child abuse”

Held remotely
says the message on your screen
when I interrupt our call to take another.

Talking or holding: you can’t do both,
even in a world whose far reaches
no longer exceed our grasp.

On the other side of the ocean, I read Resume.
When we do, you tell me laughing
you almost miss being held.

Five hours apart, yet we share a single present,
speaking, listening, from one infinitesimal
moment to the next: we hold.

See Rachel’s photographic response, “Hope and Anchor.”

High heels.
Portable pinnacles
to teeter on for others’ titillation,
back arched as if on the edge
of orgasm or some lovers’ leap.
The spine loses its spring
& the feet their feeling.
Toes in a too-small toebox
jostle & twist like
a litter of kittens
tied up in a sack.

a found poem

My love sends instant
messages while she works:
“I hope the reader
might surface from
a sea of paper.

I lost the cable too, but it
has just emerged—
along with a packet of tissues,
a lip salve & a hair comb—
from beneath an
ancient layer on
my desk.”

Five minutes later:
“No reader yet, but
two keys, three
xd memory cards,
one paperclip, two buttons,
three elastic
bands & a pair
of buttonhole scissors.
A small stapler, two
passport pictures of A.,
a nintendo stylus, a
medication prescription
form & a folding
plastic fork. Oh,
& a reel of pink
sewing cotton.
But no reader.

The tissues, I see,
came from Hotel Metro Heights,
8/35 WE A. Padam Singh Road,
Karol Bagh, New Delhi-5.

Here’s a receipt for milk
& biscuits for work
which I should have
claimed in March
last year & an un-
signed credit card.
Here’s my prefect’s
badge from school, a short
piece of six-core copper wiring,
the top from a bottle
of bath ales & an
apple pip—make
that two
apple pips. No reader.

Another credit card I didn’t
know I had! This one
is signed. I suppose
I should cut
them up.”

See Rachel’s account and a photo of some of the found objects at twisted rib.