We Construct Many Mouths


That she did struggle on occasion was endearing.
We all arrive clean and soon gather scabs.

To help us through, we construct many mouths.
Some of these we say. Others, we kiss.

All of them find passage for food.
Some of the mouths perform other functions like loving and birthing, even
     saying, the cherries are most sweet.

Can you hear me through that other mouth, the one in the shape of a shell?
I have released my headache into your hands, where I commend my strain into
     the three o'clock shadow.

I have come to terms with not being responsible for hairy flesh.
I am writing the book of mouths, of ritual knowledge that asks one ear at a
     time, and my arms are moving like the tail of a dog.

Into the smoke of every penetrating bridge, I enter the First Avenue of losing
     my name.
Spoken backwards through a room of strange water, I arrive at the party ahead
     of my voice.

The spark of my now-burnt breath creases the air of strangers.
That they do struggle with the scab is endearing, is the sound of genius and
     weeping, of loving every inch of our protracted, sometimes incurable,
     memory.


The Hands of Drawn Space


And so, it came to pass that I discerned eels in my spine.
Memories of a previous birth night after night between the thighs of strangers
     in Tokyo's Shimbashi district opened in a closed way.

Aristotle proclaimed the eel a sexless creature.
Before the 1920's no one knew how baby eels were even born.

Saddened, the hands of drawn space floated backwards flower to flower.
The most heart-rending bee blurred through wind, through Saturn's fluid ribs.

And so, their ascetic monk mouths must have fractured me.
And so, the world is unsolved like a beautiful table.

And so, our blood was already present, even in our speech.
The bone sutures rinsed a chain of whispered soups.

The way the slightest trickle, green, electric, disturbed the momentous muck.
The way Aristotle himself touched himself, searching dark sparks for rain.