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Matinee In Red Leather
His long hair is the color of creme brulee,
The texture of September Gulf sea weed,
Wet, body temperature tentacles
Tickling flesh.
I whimper, "Look at me when you come."
There is the fear of getting tangled up,
Being taken under.
Someone coughs in the dark theater,
Gives me a contraction.
I don't want to faint
On this sugar-glued cement floor.
Multiple,
I soak his alien skin,
His eyes, now, amphibian,
I can't find my shoes.
Barefoot on the sidewalk
It starts to rain.
Marti Gras confetti gets caught
Between my toes.
One more place
Your ghost can't get its hands on me.
Yet another curtain closing off
The memory of being human.
The Cold Sleep
Before surrendering to cold sleep
I kiss the sea shell-framed sienna photograph
Of us on the otherworld beach,
Dance one more with your hologram
Which I have programmed to be butter-fingered
So I can laugh one last time.
As the drugs sink their teeth in
I imagine some day I will find you
No worse for the wear
Through the soup of space and time.
I could terraform our old poison world,
Clone you from one lock of your wheat blonde
Hair on your turquoise brush,
Love without mercy,
Fuck in public places without shame,
Abandon you on some cannibal colony
Without explanation,
Walk android-like in the freezing rain
Of some alien planet
Where there are pills to erase
Memories of betrayal
And no translation for your name.
Eraser
We move into our violet beach house
On Anna Maria Island,
Pink shutters, peach cobblestone porch,
Tiger lilies pirouetting in the window box,
Sugar-white sand dusting cobalt willows,
Stone tigers guarding the door
(For you've been dreaming of them lately.)
On our new cherry wood sleigh bed
I put down the quilt my grandmother made,
Bluebirds dancing in the hyacinth,
Perfect silver beads of rain,
Dozens of tangerine moon tusks
Suspended in cotton candy pink skies.
The virgin bed waits
For your tremulous lips on the small of my back,
My eyelashes wiggling down your belly,
The pendulum of your wheat-blonde hair
Stalking my collar bone,
My tongue painting a question mark
In your ear.
Your raspberry pharaoh hound
Licks the chessboard kitchen floor
Tasting the difference between
Hunter green and sea foam.
After a dinner of ostrich fettuccini
For a moment I forget
There is a time bomb in your brain
The size of a gumball.
A kiss knocks off your white cowboy hat
In the claw-footed tub.
Some day I will visit you in the hospital.
You won't know my name,
You will dream with your hand in mine
Of a beach tigress that does not flinch
With your head in her mouth
Even as her tail erases your sandy footprints.
Kiss Me As You Have Kissed Others
It snows on the eyelashes of a cobalt horse
As it snows against the stained-glass
Windows of dreams.
A chess board patterned quilt peels back
From a French antique claw-footed bed.
We fit together like out witted animals
Wearing their cages.
Ice thickens
Through claw marks in the curtains.
It never snows on our Florida island.
Everything always feels like body temperature.
We keep winter in a cookie jar.
We leave our chewed-off legs in traps
Hardly noticing what's missing,
Crawling away free.
The Care And Keeping Of Angels
Finally you come
After otherworld versions of you
Through halos and midnight invocations,
In panting rhythm and heartfelt obscenities
And now the pecan of your calm, unblinking eyes.
You close the lancet stained-glass door
Peeling off your silhouette,
Shaking your head like the RCA dog,
Bronze fingers raking through
Your neon-blonde hair.
You ask,
"What's with the black fishnet stockings?"
Laughter to wash down
A long-stuck placebo.
Your wings beating so fast
I can barely hear my heart
Singing, "Burn them off!"
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