Ribs
Man reached in the carcass of the Lord
and tore Satan from the rib of God.
The mountains of humility went silent,
the rain of regency dried its eyes,
and the clouds of unknowing began to know.
Snow masquerading as kindness ballooned
into bombast as the world washed its hands
of worldliness. Then indifference, stiff as a
wombat penis, stirred and woke from the dream
of cascading penury. I am imbricated by the
slabs of dead ideas. I am teased by vaults of
no gold. Ghosts hold me to votes I disavow.
There is a formidable hole in the latent sky.
It takes all my strength not to worship it.
.
Mad Love
“There’s blood on your cheek,
Galatea”
—Dr. Gogol
The time they drove through Delaware
listening to Poogy, planning the future
and she sat up like a Chagall bride, told
him she was afraid. “Of what?” he asked
“Of an icy life,” she said. No fear of that,
he assured her, and she believed him, madly
.
Disappearing Ink
The inverse of disappearing ink
is invisible ink, writing (with
lemon juice, for example) which
can be seen only when warmed
(that is to say, burned). I guess,
their marriage was kind of like that,
him writing with ink that disappeared
over time, her writing with ink no one
could see. As the years passed, she could
no longer find him, though she looked hard.
As the years passed, he couldn’t read her
(could he ever?) even as she became heated.
They didn’t run out of each other’s ink.
They just grew tired of reading, I think.
.
When the Translator Disappears, the Translation Withers and Dies
The kidnapping of the translator
made big news for a short time
but then the general incomprehensibility
of things resumed and everyone,
except Lorraine, went back to work.
Lorraine refused to extend the futility
of human communication—what was
the point? she wanted to know. What
was the point of speaking if, now that
the translator had been kidnapped,
no one (no one!) could decipher what she
or anyone else had to say? Lorraine could
not fathom how people could return to work.
How was work even possible? she wondered.
An iron silence began to oppress her as she
slept. It crept into her body and she felt herself
incapable of raising her arms in greeting or to
ward off a blow. She sank deep into bitterness,
dreading the dawn and the sight of neighbors
egregious in their pretense of meaningful speech.
She pined for the return of the translator who
became messianic in her eyes. Her dreams became
denuded of images, infused only with two lines
of unvarying dialogue. “Come back to me.” “Can’t.
Can’t you see I’ve never left?” It was the translator
speaking. He was holding her in his arms. He was
looking at her with the tenderness she so terribly
craved. She felt, suddenly, as if for the first time,
understood. And she understood perfectly, perfectly,
the repressed caress of words that poured from his mouth.