*

The newts have a favorite song and require that I perform it once a day.

It's the song of an itinerant grocer I remember only vaguely as one remembers a mere essay on classless societies or pornography wherein all gestures lead finally to the sexual act. It is a song about naked men who mount their dogs and take photographs while pennies spill to the floor and bland water drips drowsily from the tap where, after a number of years, it eventually bores a hole.

 

*

 

I drink the air before me and return before my pulse beats twice.

 

*

Gaunt duplicities amid glacial deceptions
the paraphernalia of surmise
written in tobacco juice and imported cabbage
but all they ask is that we be for them
like the shady side of a guarantee
indigenous the autonomy the oldest guide
in these parts, only aspiration is complete
doubled-up and immaculate

 

*

 

To invoke the outside
is to invoke the struggle
softer and softer the laws
unanswer the swerve
event and enuciation
arch like a hammock

communication must be excluded
as validation is not acceptance

 

 

n e x t

 

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