Make Me an Omelet

Okay, so I made an omelet, but it did not become a poem. It became a fried circle spun with Sriracha and chives. I feel like a thread-maker, some kind of biblical blindness: what was his name, Ezekiel? No. The king who died in the road. The king who wept on his hands and knees and burned. I am like that guy all the time, crawling around the desert of my boyfriend. Poems appear in the distances, dark little oases, and I crawl to them, my knees and palms scorched by the sand, my lungs convulsing like – and the poem dissipates, the poem pulls back, further, further towards the bright sun, - when will I look back and see two set of footprints? When will my mother’s dream come true, her green apron torn down the middle: the time Jesus came to her – a Jew – and said, “be a canoe.” So, she became a canoe before she even knew what the word maroon meant.

still-life of the first man I masturbated to, a fantasy from my bedroom, 2003

Miles of evening-wear, orange fumes, champagne glasses flashing, the thrumming mosaic of party conversation – there, leaning against a Grecian column: tuxedo masked man, winking cuff-links– he smells like rose-thorns and gestures to the window alcove, the blood-red cushions positioned towards each-other like a child’s ankles. Outside, cornucopia of leaves, big yellow moon, the vast dark lawn waving in the wind like the tide. I follow his white-gloved hand to the cushion he sets aside for me, shiver as his limbs slide around me – I feel made of bonestalk and his voice is just rainfall. I feel taken apart as he pickpockets my clothing from my body – then, my small pale frame, my leanness, my clumsy mouth. Before he even touched me, the anticipation finished me. I became a bullet searing in the hearth, tea-kettle whistling steam. It hurt: I came in both my hands and tasted it. I tasted like champagne.