Things which do feed upon the mouth devour, not nourish.
If you want to be
so cute hipster-hair Nueva York
that you make everybody else cream themselves right at the bar
in Sophie's, sipping martinis from plastic cups,
the always trick is:
just take a step away from them.
Then the perfect kiss, and they think of you
when standing in the middle of the Rothko room
the right very next day.
I always think of you in the uncomfortable places.
Even thousands of miles away, I still think again,
think of the bank lobby Whitney where some very small frames
hung. As-yet-unknown painters had painted tiny
unknown paintings along tiny canvasses.
(You must squint
to ride along in the back seat of the 1949 Roadmaster.)
The day before, by the by, I was
in the Rothko room thinking of you before
I ever knew who you were; small scenes
of a long child hood. Oh, we all know
how we imagine people before we know them. We don't know
how to: we all know how we make them,
even before they
are real to us. Once they are manifest real
they become such a pain to deal with.
Dearest, my tongue
grazed the edges of your lips, tucked under the delicate epidermis
and bud like of April. And I forgot
about xanaxes and metal beds and plastic
bedpans filled with tocsins emptied from
my intestines:
in that touch, tongues wound
and contracted as my intestines became your intestines.
Soft and round and squishy warm, like the Bar-B-Que sausages
that the Pope ate in San Remo.
Tongues writhe and collide, lips turn
like the back of a hand does a page:
so-keep-on-it-now, and just talk sin to me, hmmmm...?
(published in Sonora Review, Vol.24/25, April 1993)
that's pretty sweet
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