Barnacle, I would like to be remade
in your image; hollowed tooth, dress of calcium, blue-salt tongue.
Your language of echoes colonizes the earth’s cold thighs. I want it
as I sometimes want the uncomplicated diminuendo of my life,
to disperse and fade, blurred into the music of bees, thirst, words
scratched into plexiglass, this being human such a dirty
business. I crave your sterile logic, philosopher’s beard glittering
with fleas. You, clutter of fossils, oxidized starlight, you fist
of loaded dice, three-card hustler of the sea, rapture of knuckles
along the mouth. You suicide letter of glee, treble cleft
kiss, you alphabet of orgasms, mineral lung, you bootlegger
of miracles, preacher with a lisp, you stripper’s robe
on the dressing room floor, you slow-cooker of meth,
glint of gold in the blues singer’s mouth, you rickshaw
vanity plate, you ten-part harmony grinding on a street corner—
Your solemn voice proliferates like spores, your junky arm
bloated with jewels, your face of scars made of history and indifference—
You breeder of ghosts, you sprawl of eyes, you cemetery
of unborn children haunting my small city.