Issue 5

Of Export

 · Poetry

*
On Fisherman Street,
I asked which boats 
leak most, how much fur to
plug holes, where to
to stuff stale newsprint.


*
Of course
there are many ways to lose
garfish, water, grain expressed 
into a baby’s mouth. Or you, 
who downed a friends’ breast 
milk, said it tasted of 
coconut, sweet dissolves. 


*
I know it is selfish to want
the Navajo rug to
wrap me in a new opera
of evasion, transmute what
I cannot say about big topics:

carnival, limes,
rocks in the pockets
of other rocks. 

*
Lowering my stratum
from troubadour to vibradour, 
my colleagues so clever
with their innuendoes.


*
A clever man called me
clever once while we
fucked on mosaics.
Dance closer, you
are clever. All the forgetting
seems key:

Rocks in the pockets

Rocks in  nostrils

Buoyant cardboard

shaped into swan boats

Sunken irons

factory-cast 

by grandfathers 

from Moldavia


 
*
Of apnea 
and red flies 
on the docks,
of little girls’
exhausting critiques.


*
              Of a body’s 
              willingness 
              to export
              to admit a
              dominant
              agent with barbs
              and paddles 
              into her
              breakdown.

Return to Issue 5