Everybody’s Animal

You trouble things simple as sandwiches.

                        Place the keys in their key-shaped existence,

spit night necklaces and breathe out.

                But hose it in.

Palm up I nuzzle

the summerish. Exchange this milkfat body.

Pistol luck, shave again. Lay your burden on me.

                        I said place it.

Night as gold and garden-cut. I love you,

how men are the enemy now,

gave prior things.  

I come back for the love of little gothics,

for the rich skull hug,

                                I come back for money then.

Irrefutable Evidence

It’s true. The people you love consume

glasses of orange juice when you’re not there,

arms and hearts moving thoughtlessly, intact.

It will be the wind eating stones, horses, an ice cube

knocking against teeth that convinces you,

perhaps light on the hairs of the tomato vine.

The heads of bourbon roses float in a crystal bowl

inside a city, where you are both mayor

and black silk-stocking caught in a tree.

Tonight, a nearby wood is thinking of you.

Soon the streetlamps will begin to switch on,

for those who attended the burial have all gone home.

In the Office of My Heart’s Desire

We were pulled tight for some years, then

                                privileged to return to the memory of a prior comfort.

The system appeared before us as series of small hot rooms.

                                Evenings were the toughest.

A sense of autonomy is currency.

                                        Think, the small house in which

your father first learned to touch himself

                                        with purpose.

But returning to the system, think jungle gym in late February, think coughing

                                        up old fluids and nightlight.

                                                                        Think, caught in class. Now everybody knows.

You are inexplicable.

                        All wet, all stain.

Exiting the elevator, he said,

                                this is the floor 

                                                        where the whores get off.

Were it so simple, sir.

Encyclopedia of Wanton Touches

                                                        Sunday

morning gold. A seeking.

Touch your stomach. Touch it there. Woke with wanting.                

                        A reminder. Inhabit. An infestation. The light nearly edible,

the sheets rubbed soft. Morning smells almost done.

                                                How do men turn

bad in good light.                                                 It takes the wanting; is traded.

Out of cash. Coffee on another continent.

                        Dog bark slices the hour.

A map drawn with the wrong lines of craving.

                                        Blood smudge.

                                         And my only home disappeared.  

Soft Volcano

We have done little harms to each other,

and we shared soup when the moment was right.

Remember the nights we animalled until full dawn,

got vicious and chomped the starlight,

the darkness spread like sick around this place.

I still stop dead for the marvelous mouth of you,

even if our skins droop and waver,

cleft and lift at inopportune times.

Now the scent of baby heads, of mother mouths and dishes.

Good morning, little headache of this life I inadvertently chose.

I wish to make a ravishing of you.

Let’s stomp around without apology, surrender again today.

Libby Burton