the poem

A woman becomes a laurel.
A woman becomes a bird, birds. How much
familiarity does it take to become beyond
vengeance? Men in mineral form may still
Get around and isn’t it just my luck that,
newly dog, I cannot get the time of day.
It’s just that time of life. My sister kept an island full
of beasts with human backstories for whom it was a lot of the same old.
For us it’s each according to the pursuer she eludes.
He was a shower of gold, a rodeo star.
He was a chunk of time I couldn’t account for.
On the magazines that someone has made
for me I find 10 TRICKS. 5 SIGNS. 8 MYTHS.
10 SECRETS. 15 MOVES. What gladness
even a single sign would be to a woman who doubts.
What comfort 15 moves for the freakshow majesty of this paralysis.
We will need all our tricks, ways, secrets, signs
We are still animals together vulnerable as a battery
of panting hens packed in sisal or bandages or whatever.
The skein of cartilage and the covers parted from the wet pink purse.
Eyes like a bunch of marbles somebody just lost in a bet.
In the end, even those of us who haven’t had our throats cut can’t
properly say why that is but we fancy that we have grown a bit since when
we were so looking forward to looking like our mothers
who are all always real stunners..
A fable about the funniness of homo habilis:
A people beset by a feelgood God.
There is no such thing as being left alone.
I was once lost in the bush thinking
for the first time:
if an apple is 80 extra calories, how many points is that?
It wasn't a science yet.
A woman had never had points before.
Skip ahead. There are still points to spend.
The point of this story is not that we have been
sacrificed indiscriminately. Are we still pretending
to this stagy PTA-mom outrage? God drinks blood.
A seamy side to any industry. The book was his intended,
his child bride. The point is that for the first time,
the intention was sufficient in place of flesh.
He ate the thought and left the child inscribed.
I write that he does not devour the city.




-pccs