2/13/2016
"notice how he has numbered the blue veins in my breast.
he is building a city, a city of flesh.
he is an industrialist."
anne sexton

i've seen god themself stirring
subzero confectioner's sugar around this place,
you are the dried up ***** on my face

something acrid that i fell asleep and neglected to wash
i used to cut down swathes of brambles, and the bees
they'd run away

when i was a kid they followed me everywhere.
"you're sweet, kid" my father would say
now he just says i am stupid, so droll

as if i've never known that before
my bulbous arteries run with the notion of
him, sweltering, pointing

"bowie's on sale again,"
the same stamp on the telephone box
there, rotting, gentle

two years later
i say this: there is nothing in princeton
and everything in manhattan

that princedom where you stumble on
***** sidewalks and run hands along bubonic
subway railings

where, really
wanting to throw myself on the freight rail
would just be wanted to throw myself off the Veranzzano.

sylvia said it best, i guess
my own bell jar sour as ever
no matter whether

i'm in Bremen
Lesotho or
in his bed, again

i'd find a way to do it,
i told her
the only place i am willing to.