(39)
Whereas, the kiss was denigrated when the rhythm of it
kept time with thought
Whereas, Mary saw her
son in a Rorschach and we only ambiguous nipples
Whereas, we spent
a year medicated—underwater hearing voices that wanted us to be holy
Whereas, we no longer want to eat the self with the mother tongue
Whereas, recorded sounds of urgency were people forcing themselves on each other
—not eroded tile silhouetting birds in the
subway
Whereas we felt like our first erection
—wanting
but not knowing where to place it
—wanting
nothing more than hair on the navel and the sex of the animal made to leather
We are each other’s cistern
We board our past weather after spreading citrus on our
clitoris
We want to buy our friendly druggist a bouquet of valleys
We want our necklace of teeth to
mean something
We wish our eyes xanthic
and envision
our insides as paint
We wish every raw color were crushed
to velvet and used as salt
—to wilt leeches from the aria’s in our stomach
We decide what the light looks like
We, Euclidean algorithms tattooed on a hip
We, impassible bridges over milk
We, displacement
We, weight of precious metals overflowing clawfoot baths
We, thumbprint angels made when climbing out steam drunk
We, chattering teeth pressed in linoleum
(40)
Whereas, Mary Accepts the Ambiguity
White linen-ed aureoles pierced with
cubic zirconia,
I whistle the same three notes to
announce a latent presence
as personable. I’ll admit there is
art,
a monetized experience if you hide
the drugs when the plumber arrives.
The critic discusses the plumber as
an interlocutor
in the aftermath. They do not get
arrested when the heat is fixed.
Hallelujah! The peasant finds
survival, hunkers down
till abandoned. Progress measured
through memory
burying a horse shot out of
compassion.
Of singing with a throat like a
mastiff. Of dreaming
of owning a throat large enough to
throw a heart.
Of mouths washed out with dove.
[My horns have gone the way of the Auroch]
My horns have gone the way of the Auroch
I’m ceaselessly milked of any small inherence
for food and housing. I must speak about death at 31,
but why?—I ask—the body—I’m reminded—
is exciting!
It needs to exist. You can feel
orgasm at the feet of pain
the body leaves when lending its hands, after chasing
abrasions, lips, hair
sultry rejectamenata cleaved—in the biblical
sense—in reduction of longing. Ain’t sex
sad now? Ain’t sex all milk baths and lilly
on the nipple? As if the perennial is an
accessory
to the breast, as the
Black Sea
whispering to sunken 9 B.C.:
I shall hold you because I’m
worried. They’ll scavenge
all they thought
renewable. You
the remnants
of a privilege asking,
What is that animal outside?
How on Earth did it find its
way
into the city?
Patrick
Redmond received his MFA at Brooklyn College. He currently teaches composition
and creative writing at CUNY. Recent poems may be found in Bomb Cyclone,
Prelude, and Paragraphitti.
