Archaic Torso of Barbie
We cannot know her fabled feet
that arched like Lacanian Ss. And yet her torso
still reveals a glowing impasse,
like a flashlight, in which her gaze, always on,
turns everything to surface. Otherwise
the absence of nipples couldn't puzzle you so,
nor could the blank stare of smoothness
spell denial between her thighs.
Otherwise this plastic would seem defaced
beneath the fetishized thinness, and would not
glitter like a lubricated dildo:
would not, from the borders of itself, wrap up
like cellophane: for here there is no place
that does not ignore you. You must change your clothes.
Refrain
the hand of Ramses
be extended the hand of Ramses
be not extended the hand of Ramses
is extended the hand of Ramses
is not extended
to you the hand of Ramses
is a knot of bees without anger
without anger the hand of Ramses
is a delta that does not spread
from the sun in the sun
the hand of Ramses
palms the desert with a shadow
in a shadow be there water
the hand of Ramses
the sun you cannot drink from
the hand of Ramses
palm of bees knot of shadow
does not extend the hand of Ramses
desert not anger is extended
the hand of Ramses
be not dealt to you
Clarity’s
Pleats
The sky, crumpled invitation, reddens to an exit sign. Meanwhile,
he preaches the emancipation of long shadows. Away from the
bonfire, sticky alibis harden to fact. No one emptied the
wishing well.
But patience is a revolving door, the prayer unfolding an obsolete
book of maps. Alert for the buzzer, perched naked among the
shelves, you pretend to browse. The horizon fills with this
many fingers.
As
the view repeats its dark window, a head speaks only of symmetries.
The thousand burning corridors refuse to sing.
Wait until the ceremony’s import, he’s ready to take, whatever
embarrassment it be now. Who dares call tomorrow stained?
The doors open but no one walks.
Customer parking next to the excuse window. Is that you, hunched
under the so-called oaks, demanding that truth paralyze, beyond
the advertised gossamer stillness?
In a selfish orphan’s confusion of abandonment with money,
he files the city under “G.”
