These are the hands to which small things come to die

 

saturday, september 11. 2021.

 

on Saturdays I sleep.

the sleep of the dead. I shed the weight of the

week from my bones, peel it off my alabaster

skin like new plaster– and then– I sun

myself with my mouth pressed to a gun.

in the white-light heat of an old summer sun

I lie on the ground. I’ve only got one

shot; right in that hot spot,

till I turn crisp-burnt brown

and the insides of

my thighs are 

succulent –

 

chicken,

finger-lickin’,

 

for a bad boy to feast on

on his way out of town.

 

but nobody leaves.

nobody comes.                                                                                   

                                                              the radio sings:

the borders are shutting down -

ain’t nobody getting outta this town.

 

 

Is this, then, quite similar to the wait

of the weak. who pine for the week to end,

some sign of the weekend, which twinkles and winks

like a whore in glass-sequined dress,

making you such a mess because you want her

but cannot afford her;

 

this is how life, with a sultry pout,

shimmies right past us.

As we choke up with yearning to buy her;

that good stuff they all talk about.

I’m waiting for a miracle

some bad boy to rev up his metal machine

and blow up this city to hot smithereens

break this silence with a thunder,

 

there’s some hot current under.

churning

 

like blood on the highway

a slippery thing, shimmering in

the sweltering heat; as you’re racing right in -

- something is coming.

something is humming,

a warm liquid build-up

beneath the surface

about to start cumming

 

there’s a heatwave in the horizon

the country’s gone to the dogs,

and the dogs are in heat

 

to the rank smell of meat

leave me be, leave me be, leave me be.

 

so I cleanse myself on Saturdays

these lonesome wholesome Saturdays

singing on my skin like fresh-laundry static,

that zing when right out of the dryer. and the hairs

on your arms rise higher.

I’m your chicken fresh out of the fryer

I want so much to sing

so I sing when I want to sing

and plant myself in the earth with the green live things;

the summer bees buzz in my hair,

and the red gnats gnaw right through me.

 

 

there’s a mood in the air

something crude in the air

like wasted semen

while you were too busy dreaming;

like blood when the friend comes to visit

an awkward little girl.

 

I sniff a revolution.

my nose like a bloodhound

is rarely wrong

and the scent is strong,

my pearl.