DOUBLE BACK

Rose said love me harder. Rose said like
an Elysian Mary. Bloody her. Spectacle
rising like gloat. Salt on the rim, shot like
a pucker. Rose said I’ll tell you what: a spell

like the smell of him, ash between your breasts.
His chest a hero. Say it, lovey. Black cherie,
bête blanche. Pin me simple, my breath, my breath.
Pass me, Angel. I’ll wear my best.

R. said a rip in the fabric is a honey-bone
cry, and I am a grassy Negro hum de
la dee. I was never ripped, cried she,

cried she. Ach, c’est la vie. Say it, say
it, Rosie. Split the difference, vive la, vive la be.
Gray tone. And I am singing: baby, homo, home.

ANNA MARIA HONG

You said: In an empty room the mind may wander.
I said: But my legs are tired.

When you left nothing changed, but the junk mail piled up on my doorstep—first two pieces, then three, then whole bundles still warm, then cartons then truckloads—hundreds of skinny women in sweaters, in smiles, asking, begging, won’t I won’t I just come out to the balcony come down to the street come in and purchase, purchase what only I was missing?

            Objects forgotten like sound fading.  Objects discovered like echoes.   
            Listen to this box of clothes and hear your restless bedmate.  Hear this 
            gibberish, this mumble, this foreign language of what once was.          

            Please hide me from the plastic comfort of things. 

            And from stagnation: time absorbed by furniture.

Before we met I had no idea where I was. Now my head is full of timetables and maps and pictures and plans, and I don’t know where to be, don’t know where you are.

            Though somewhere a banana flower opens to the light; somewhere orchids     
            fall from the canopy like discarded smiles; somewhere a million insects 
            walk the surface of the pond.

ABRAHAM BURICKSON

“This was back when we lived in San Francisco. My friend Yma was trying to plan a party and complaining about the difficulty of getting the gender balance right. She said the women in San Francisco were so manly, the more of them you invited the more “male” the party became. Her roommate Darnton decorated everything with paisley and flowers and mirrors and old instructional manuals for busted electronic antiquities he and Yma had purchased at flea markets. To pay for anything was embarrassing. Anything you dragged off the street you’d count on someone eventually telling you had been in their apartment before. And anything you put out on the street was gone before you could get back up your stoop. If you visited your parents you dragged along an empty suitcase and raided the attic. The whole Bay Area was majoring in Thrift Store. People even bought used drugs. And every time you broke up with someone you knew you were just making them more attractive for the next person. Up to a point. Ever see the movie Logan’s Run? When you turned thirty you floated up towards the ceiling of the discotheque and exploded.”

JONATHAN LETHEM