I grabbed a couple beers (light, domestic, cheap for whoever paid for them)
from her mini-fridge.
I had made my mind up to run an edit on this piece I scribbled
down onto napkins a few months ago,
when I was still sleeping on the floor
and she was sleeping on it too
just because it was the floor I was sleeping on
and not because she was trying to become the Buddha.
I suppose if I took long enough tonight, I could recreate the spirit of that lost piece,
but it was in prose. It did not tell the truth. It only reported what had happened,
sedate as a newspaper headline and as full of lies.
I can recall a fact from when I was aged five
but I can scarcely remember the myriad deceptions of yesteryear
of which I am heir or author.
I consider for a moment going to find it-
I do not mean the paper.
I
Could
wake her from her comfortable sleep
and drag her to this carpeted floor
where I anxiously tap my foot until the cat hits my foot for being interesting
and kick the cat out of the room and lay with her
And afterward she
Could
look over at a bookshelf and say
“What is that?”
pointing at a serrated wire long as a garrote,
with hoops at the ends for you to put
Your fingers or lengths of wood into, depending on what size branch
You need to fell to its mother, Earth.
It would rest on a shelf in front of a few minor works of Marquez,
a few feet from where a man would lay his head in this room,
if a man slept in this room.
I reply,
“It is called a fingersaw”
And she would suddenly become embarrassed
at the scant light cast upon her wrists her shoulders her breasts her collarbones,
though just minutes before she was a goddess come again to the world,
and pull a sheet up to her neck as though she were not so beautiful and rare
that her very existence caused jealousy in flower petals and cold-clear alpine streams.
She would ask,
“Why do you have a fingersaw?”
And I would laugh and laugh,
My sweat and her sweat snaking in slow trails down my naked body,
As I square my shoulders and smile down at her
And reply
“Why do you think?”
from her mini-fridge.
I had made my mind up to run an edit on this piece I scribbled
down onto napkins a few months ago,
when I was still sleeping on the floor
and she was sleeping on it too
just because it was the floor I was sleeping on
and not because she was trying to become the Buddha.
I suppose if I took long enough tonight, I could recreate the spirit of that lost piece,
but it was in prose. It did not tell the truth. It only reported what had happened,
sedate as a newspaper headline and as full of lies.
I can recall a fact from when I was aged five
but I can scarcely remember the myriad deceptions of yesteryear
of which I am heir or author.
I consider for a moment going to find it-
I do not mean the paper.
I
Could
wake her from her comfortable sleep
and drag her to this carpeted floor
where I anxiously tap my foot until the cat hits my foot for being interesting
and kick the cat out of the room and lay with her
And afterward she
Could
look over at a bookshelf and say
“What is that?”
pointing at a serrated wire long as a garrote,
with hoops at the ends for you to put
Your fingers or lengths of wood into, depending on what size branch
You need to fell to its mother, Earth.
It would rest on a shelf in front of a few minor works of Marquez,
a few feet from where a man would lay his head in this room,
if a man slept in this room.
I reply,
“It is called a fingersaw”
And she would suddenly become embarrassed
at the scant light cast upon her wrists her shoulders her breasts her collarbones,
though just minutes before she was a goddess come again to the world,
and pull a sheet up to her neck as though she were not so beautiful and rare
that her very existence caused jealousy in flower petals and cold-clear alpine streams.
She would ask,
“Why do you have a fingersaw?”
And I would laugh and laugh,
My sweat and her sweat snaking in slow trails down my naked body,
As I square my shoulders and smile down at her
And reply
“Why do you think?”
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