lost in sprawl city

If my love gets lost in a black hole I’ll only have myself and gravity to blame

listen

i don’t believe in heaven

but i do believe in heavenly bodies

like ours, colliding and swirling into one

another, spirited tangle or tango

aren’t the arms of the Mice flung out

in dance, coiling around each others’ necks

until death do us come together

two salacious celestials at the other end

of an intergalactic voyeur.

making love and making light don’t seem so

different anymore, do they?

Every kiss on the neck a star

bursting into existence our universe

is like some backwoods bazaar

and we’re standing in the corner

under dim lamplight

dancing to a composition death

emitting jets of heat from the centers of ourselves

like listen

i don’t believe in church

but i do believe in the mass

of a black hole

and the silence at the end of a song

and the darkness at the end of  light

and the destruction at the end of our creation

I don’t mean to disappoint. I’m just not sorry when I do.

Dolls (3)

plastic succubae, they haunted my childhood sleep-those

throbless creatures with odd necks that snapped or crumbled

when thrown from the bed or bashed with a hammer

and i would wake into the welcoming dark, relieved

for those rosy-cheeked specters with fingers that would not part

had vanished and i could will myself to better dreams, forget

those blank voids that caused me cringings-for although

i could not appreciate death, i understood not living

Wanda Coleman

The Invention of Your Face

I was waiting when you came back from

Argentina—the summer you smuggled

Dulce de leche in your luggage. You talked

About the film: you’d discovered how

The proscenium shifted, haloing the body

In the camera gaze—and how you emerged

Through that fluid arch each frame. You’d

Missed me, you’d missed her: six years old

And suddenly shy in your presence. You

Spooned sweet milk paste from the tin into

Her cereal bowl—then let image after image

Appear for her through a camera lens you made

Of your hands, held like half-opened wings in the air.

She could see the great waterfall, Iguaçú, and miles

Of hardwood trees, called Breakers of the Axe,

Quebracho, as they swirled up in the Chaco—and one red

Horse galloping all by itself across the Pampa. I watched her

Changing expressions: I knew how many nights she’d gone

Searching for you, beyond the movable walls of a dream.

You showed her a little bird that sang in Pagatonia wearing

A gaucho’s hat and she ate sugar paste she barely tasted. She

Was a child; she took in whatever sweetness you

Provided—what sweetness there was in the world

That we could see. Silent, the two of us, staring at you—

We could never get past it: the invention of your face.

Carol Muske-Dukes

found an oyster in the harbor but instead of finding a pearl

when i opened it up it played jazz

a music box mollusc

salt water/fresh soul

hippest bivalve this side of the mid-atlantic ridge