Exquisite Corpse - A Journal of Letters and Life

American Nights
by Barry Blumenfeld
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Where do you find these eloquent lovers?
"You are every man's fantasy."
You scoff, but it's true enough for laughs
     or a shoddy argument.

The bravos in the fuck bars
     have to hustle that wicked ass
Your hair streams platinum on Hillsborough
     in the romance of neon midnights --
     the haze that engulfs you as Isabel
          rides your bare back,
the blaze of hair on your armpits
     like snakes in the white light of cocaine,
the nine-toned message
     in the timbre of your groans
          for whoever it is who gives you head,
the gale of your breath
     in the struggle to the pinpoint
          of illumination,
and when you come, Lucinda,
     masks fall off
          in your baby's dream.

Scheherezade in the Player's bar,
You retail that cocaine packed in tampons,
     and how you tried the scheme at sunrise
     on a beach in the Bahamas.
And you say of course you do that --
     Did I think you were a nun?
You croon, you husk, you moan:
     "I like to watch,
     I like to do it nursing --
     Spritz 'em with milk --
     it's like ejaculation!"
But you reek of ammonia and your skin
     is the color of ripe bananas.

Jocko hasn't heard that you've got cancer.
He talks hammers, nails, and Henry Miller.
He had a girl on the common
     in Chapel Hill
     at two in the afternoon.
She was fifteen and delicious.
Last year he tried to get inside,
     but you were fucking Carlos then
     and apparently you're monogamous!

I've been writing this for years
     and it still hasn't finished me.
Your eyes are yellow suns
     buzzing the Glenwood underpass
          at two a.m. daring me to jump.
Your love is a city with too many citizens.

I biked home on Glenwood,
     May, eleven p.m.,
past Five Points and Winn Dixie,
     the bar lights and marquees,
          down Whittaker Mill
to Isabel and you, her seat
     your open flesh,
          your eyes in dreamland,
your silence later,
     the red towel around your breasts.
With one twist of a hand
     it might have been undone.

I had a May pole in the starlight.
In your bed closet,
     the mama cat dropped
     six
     dead
     kitties.
My nose was in your cunt.
Balls, pussy lips--same lonesome hairs.
You are a sphinx, I am meat.

I lie in Joshua's room
     on his low bed
          among his toy animals.
Your sheets whisper in the darkened hall.
You stop your door with a wooden wedge.
We turn on the spit of our desires.

Cocaine: by its horn of light
     your womb is too symbolic.
You told Isabel before anyone,
     you two so steeped in allegory.
I touch your hair, but my hand is numb.
By its horn of light
     the moon's horn glows
     all across the stoop
     where you say "Say something"
     and demand some other metaphor:
Galahad, a magus, or the stars.

Rape, rape, psychic rape...
Rape, I am a pair of ears,
     the better to hear you.
Rape, I am a pair of eyes,
     the better to see you.
The wolf is at your door,
     the child in his treetop cradle.
Baby cancer, baby boy,
     cancer lover, lover boy --
At last I am a pair of claws.

The hair that crowns you, spun metals,
     the hair below your arms like hay.
Woolly brown the hair like a hand
     that cups your groin
     then licks one finger
     from cunt to asshole
     and lackadaisically caresses
     the summits of your thighs.
The skin of your face, now flush, now sallow --
Tracks come and go around your eyes --
Pouched incipient jowls, the skin around your mouth --
Siren the concave cheeks,
     the deep lips pulled back from the teeth --
Your son scored the skin across your hips --
Melanin flecks the soft back skin --
Gold, the skin that tents your ribs --
Drawn, the skin along your teats --
And your nipples too
     are huge and drawn and golden.

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