Sterile-cold and smelling
slightly of antiseptic
two leather half-moons
press into the crests
of your cheekbones.
The lenses click
swirling in their sockets
cover first one eye
and then the other.
Can you read the
writing on the wall?
Lovely lotus eater
swallowing desire or
wallowing in an advert
you’ve reached a
new peak
you are the epitome
the consummate consumer.
Your new glasses
may compliment your
cashmere
but they won’t
help you see.

Let’s go for a swim,
love. Its high tide
waves rising through
these sheets.
We’ll make like
denizens of the sea;
lips opening and closing
air bursting through the gaps
and our hair tangling
together in the current
two sirens
soft-singing
without a ship in sight.
Underwater, I can
hardly hear your sighs
but I know what your
body says when
fish-like it becomes
one band of muscle
from the line of your jaw
to the curling hooks
of your toes.
Let’s float to the shore,
love. At low tide
when the ebbing keeps
rhythm with a heartbeat
we’ll drown with
our mouths open
drinking in the pink-
scented atmosphere.

I have, throughout my life,
often been beset with a sort of
sickness,
a longing located
deep within my
shoulder blades for
wide white wings with which
to fly high away
from this world
and all it's little troubles.

Never before have I been so
afflicted than as I sit
in view of the world's walls,
these wide wild mountains.
It is as if I cannot
bear the thought
of being unable to touch
something so much greater
than my self.

I wear many faces.
Skull-grin stiff and smiling,
they present a kaleidoscope,
a re-fractured, glass-shattered
symbolic representation.
Here’s to piecing it all together,
to the hope that one day
the snake-skin masks
will all shed.

the position of being on top.
untouchable, untouched by
Oppression is a tool;
govern bodies to
subdue too-loud
voices of reason.

I think fear
is like a newborn, swaddled
in blood and ***** cloths, cradled
in the curvature of a rib cage. It
flourishes when coddled, time-gorged,
replete with leaps not taken.

Your curls are Gulf Coast weather,
rarely cloudless and sunny, each
frustrating loop a messy
ice-cream scoop cascade.
They look like a love affair,
as ***-centered as your star sign,
too-friendly, sunday-sensuous,
meandering into ***** knots.
Every sweet-floral-fruity
custard you toss them in
is as well deserved as the
satin on your lashes and the
salve that slicks your
orbicular body.