OUR MUSEUM

We molded ourselves into a little death community.
Like Pygmalion the master we fashioned each other
in the image of that which we found most beautiful.
Into hollowed-out jacuzzis we poured sweet crude oil
and tied together the ankles of endangered pelicans
and holding them in our arms we fell backwards
the way that Olympians fall: with austerity.
We took photographs with our smartphones of these events
then uploaded them to Flickr and Facebook accounts
with tags, with highlights, and pithy captions;
no better way to build a mirror than that, or this.
We kidnapped vegans from the aisles of upscale markets,
we bound their wrists and dragged them from farmers’ markets,
and we force-fed them ortolans drowned in Armagnac.
We purchased illegally harvested coral from Craigslist
and with this coral we decorated our glass aquariums
which held Amazonian tree frogs, crucified and drowned,
not so venomous as others would have you believe.
Splayed like victims of vehicular manslaughter
in the image of that which we found most beautiful.

ARCHAELOGICAL SURVEY FROM A FUTURE ERA

The human brain was painted on the neck of god:
the heart on plain white canvas.
Our lungs were stitched from plaster and stone-
withered skin, the recollections of fettered deer.
When we breathe we breathe compositions
in the classical mode, not modern, not yet vulgar.
The oils from our skin and hair sketch
fanes crisping in alleyways, moray ways.
We slide from window-pane to window-pane
when we ought to elide and make a proper leg.
This is how we interact: in drawings,
the vaguest illustrations point-for-point
between one kneeling person to the next.
In a glass case you will see:
our heads of carton-pierre, bound to deny
the susurrations that announce them.

MY VERY OWN MILITARY MARCH

Drum thrum a-drum tum-thrum
sprawl the footfalls of military men
in perfect cadence and rifle-frown
across the porches of girls in blush
and gown, breasts neither full nor grown.
They step in line, through circumstance,
threading French folk dance
and without thimble and without needle.
They came to court, they came forthwith
to throw the flowerbooks at others’ feet.
Forward, cock, fire, and shoulder-slung
the rifle-frown: drum, sprawl, step,
and go good in thievery.

IRRECONCILABLE

The wife says to the husband:
I will reduce you to
one-tenth of your former strength
and then cut you further
by factors of ten,
again and again.
The husband says to the wife:
speak to my lawyer.

CONSERVATION ELEGAIC

Thunnus thynnus bleeds so prettily,
watercolor fingerpaints on porcelain canvas.
I splayed the guts upon her cheek,
aligned the spine along the cut of her jaw.
I was unsurprised to see it bleed so blue,
spreading daylit sky around her shivering eyes.
I sewed the smallest bones to her lashes
and told her not to blink.
I wrapped the flesh around her neck
and said this will keep you warm,
this will keep you warm.
The skin I kept for myself to wear,
a mask like any other, but gold and dull.
It clung to my nose in particular
and the scales did not shine at all.
I said now we are worth one hundred thousand dollars.

THIS MOST BEAUTIFUL PROOF OF THE THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION

He carried his mimesis with him
as if it were a drugstore receipt.
He was not unpalatable.
On some days he sat at the bar
and on some days he sat at a table.
He asked her what are a few of your favorite things
and he asked her, and her, and her as well.
On Sundays he slicked his hair back,
Buddy Holly drinking Belgian beer,
unpronounceable.
He said to her what a serendipity
and he said to her, and her, and her as well.
On Mondays he shook his hair like a dog.
On all days he drank like a dog, lapping them up.
The breed he best resembled would likely be
the black-and-tan Patterdale
but he could not bolt the fox.
Black-tongued.
He leaned too forward and spoke too quickly.
On Tuesdays he outsinuated; on Thursdays
he set his alarm clock fifteen minutes early
and woke up forty minutes late.
How proud, he was, in his buttoned collar,
in his unpressed shirt, like a gladiator,
never not gladiating.

HUES THAT I HAD NOT SEEN

In the city they built war machines. The once-blue skies stained gray with the smoke of war: burning coal and smelting iron to build bombs and bombs and bombs. Everything became gray: the quaint little cafes, the mechanics’ garages, and all the bookshops; the books inside and all their pages turned gray. The men and women of the city lost their shades and tones and hues. The doctors turned to war, the writers turned to war, the musicians turned to war: all the best of the city went to killing ways instead of better ways.

There lived in this gray city a young, gray man. His brown hair, once the same shade and tone of a squirrel darting from branch to branch in the spring, was now struck by shades of gray. He used to tuck a pen behind his ear, but it fell into a sewer grate some time ago and he never replaced it. Perhaps he wished to one day become a journalist, but in actuality he worked as an accountant in an office, calculating and tabulating the endless mathematics of death and dying. It did not bother him. The little bakery on the streetcorner where he ate breakfast served only the blandest of stale pastries and coffee without cream or sugar. Perhaps some time ago it may have served the most delicious little buttered treats, thin and airy, and biting into them may have felt like eating a cloud while flying through a blue, blue sky.

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WENDER WELDS THE WAY

Wender welds the way
then cleaves, then cleaves.
Splinters hang from boughs
like outstretched fingers
to a child’s crinkled mouth.
He reaches upward and
this is a slight gesture
and he retreats from this
as if it were dust.
But he box-steps forward,
dim brown eyes downcast,
neither registering
nor registered in the way.

She leans aside:
her form peels from walls
and she drips paint -
what a mess -
across the marble floors.
Wender procures a mop
and mops the marble floors.
He follows behind her
in an adjectival fashion.
He would not do this
if he were a better wender.

BUILDING THE COMPOSITE BEAUTIFUL

Building the composite beautiful
From pieces I have never seen
Becomes a task outsize the breath
Excised. Her grace outpaced
Tumbling vertigo, outgrew flowers
In the brain. How was I to know that
She could not be measured by
The metrics of letting go.

TRAILS, TRAILS

He walks bestride the colossus tree
who walks as well as he.
He carries fistfuls of paper napkins
and he tears them up and releases.
They fall like ballerinas.
He is survived by:
a wife; a son; a daughter.