Human Flesh Search Engine
In the Taqueria steam, you make me an organ
cooler with your neon-Jack-Daniel’s-dusty kiss.
The city is in shambles and we’re somehow still
breathing within our generation of body stackers.
My sweet, beat me up around the old oak tree;
call me, at least once, your Southern Comfort.
I have measured our love in bottle-caps
and beer boxes. I dismantled the ceiling
fan last night because you were so far away
…I’ve been sleepwalking. Happy people kill
themselves all the time to the happy music
we put on as we fuck. My hands: raw, Cloroxed
hummingbirds. The last night you slept
on my green as a sea settee, I soft-shoed
to the kitchen, blew out the pilot,
each shallow breath another knob turning up.
You say: ugly girls write the best poetry.
On my loneliest nights, I slip into someone
else with a bad, blond wig and a coworker’s hand
-me-down dress. I dance on every floor
of my apartment building—as if my body is
everything flying out of a wild, unlocked sanctuary—
as if everything unused is collapsing.
