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I. Assume the Position

A woman claimed her baggage and expected
the portmanteau would provide her quivering mass

with an enforceable shape of fleshliness.

The audience played coy until re-dressed, she stood,
existence in the feat of clothes,

a shoelace this side of untied.

Open or zipped though, no one remains womb-side.

Like a Russian pear, she prepared her hips
and transparent limbs for kinship with

government antennae—the canyon jumping is endless.

There will be voices to pull from
an abscess, codes we’ve stored in each infection

for solitary weekends, nights that go bump

in our name-brand skulls, or against the threads

of a stitched-down heart. The choices are rampant.

Bodies repel moreover but for a flip of tangled ropes
distracted by attraction. Oxygen’s the same,

though a bit indifferent, once we breathe it.

II. Law for the Wounded

Feminine flares signal quieter departures. No one
ever swam the length of Attica’s history. Upstate

New York, 1960s:

Let’s play prisoner

like escapees, though there will be time to eat

a telling peach and sleep eternally.

But both are cast-offs of a population engaged
in fashioning future freedoms. A time-out is less likely

once the subject remarks upon the island

and re-inserts his number as a figment of society.

Do you have an answer ready for your next question?

III. Feeling in the Blanks

How will the host arrange these passing names
at the table? Skin gives in to the blind.

Gives an aside as in, Don’t hold your breath

so long

if you don’t intend to keep it.

These are just ruthless methods for sending
literary bombs as a context for the passing perfect

present. We’ll never occupy such intangible tragedies.

The distractions are aperitifs to atmosphere
as well as an able-bodied parent, until

dismissed behind the smoke of illegal cigars.

I am coddled without a background in diamond digging

or a bolder moon to climb upon.

We walk the rocks, listening out for faraway
or siren-like voices. We are shifting organs

bound for fodder, if the notes haven’t been mistaken.

In the greatest of case studies, Jesus was a god-maker.

After reading and leaving the clinic,
I felt a similar road in my windshield.

Truth exists in increments like

these little cube paintings found their place

among the living and settled for a maker status,

verging on blasphemy in sight-specific regions.

IV. Promise with a Catch

After this pencil gesture or a Maltese disguise,
ribbons, ribbons, ribbons are tied.

Stenciled-on harmonica lips smile at my beck-

oning disgrace, on my one true love,

a once-over you’ll find was never your friend,

if ever an end, an end never gives

up, won’t give in or continue the vein

of corporate occupation. Evasion envisions escape.

Exactly each day is a minifacial. Each one promises
a battle hymn as though patrol control central

could ever deliver the next porous paradise.

This is the last time I’ll nearly be clean.

In turn, I return to you always, dirt on the sole

of a boot, the flush of a worm at your meat.