It is just as hot as in the age of the great religious wars
In the beginning the lyre had only one string
wind gone cello deep storm
Diane Von Furstenberg who created the wrap dress
has a buzzer beside her to call
her assistants a diamond necklace that says
“I am in control”
“Sex-positive” a phrase Diane learns
in her interview and immediately adheres to
Sex-positive I am reading on my phone
Missing the
black smudged ink on my fingers from coated paper
A tinge of excitement in my feet the brief ache
flu-like in my ankles
one of the not-covid viruses the allergy clinic says are
“very around” The peonies have blurred into beauty
I am lucky to live in a light-filled house
And with the people I love the exquisite nearness
of DM-ing my friends in New York
when did I come to prefer this my friends
just across the bridge the street I would walk
across to see if I could bring myself
over the glittering waters
before they DM me I wonder if they
have read the Diane Von Furstenberg
in its entirety in The New Yorker
or seen the decapitated head
if they kept scrolling, clicked the link to allow it
or not
decay is a world where one is in demand
to bring oneself
and be among other’s others, ghosts in our pockets,
ancestors, strangers alike share recipes
how much cold butter in the piecrust
the world does not say what to ignore
the world is internally cognating
Chicago Manual of Style
Our presidents circle one another displacing dates, times, legalities
great swathes of 17th, 18th, 19th, 20th, 21st
century prose, the presidents in a rotunda
continue to embarrass us all
each one gets an aphorism a piece
the Earth is complacent sometimes
you have to pay the hand
that shakes yours inhale the heat
Discovery the dark shadow the hand makes across paper
in dappled light from the summer walnut tree
what is the evolutionary need for a convulsion
before being fed
the starving die upon eating
if not given sugar water first
addicts shit their pants in anticipation
Diane Von Furstenberg’s mother 19 months in Auschwitz
Salads for the resistance!
Ghosts suggest new dresses this time over pants,
Vibrating spiderwebs a single white flower bodice
I love that Pasolini loved Marianne Moore
People rush to swarm in their mysteries
The ghosts who accompany them
are made of flint and chalk they stir a hot bath with your hand
A war abroad is like sitting alone outraged in a room invisible to everyone else
Athena coming in on a wind her gold gown falling out of a cloud
Athena pulling Achille’s hair back in her fist exposing his neck
whispering stop this into his ear
As he was getting far too into it with Agamemnon
If the rules of battle are not followed
massacre replaces battle
It’s an old story, one found floating in ether
an inked blank corner clipped from the half-title leaf
Diane Von Furstenberg giving birth to Anderson Cooper
before she flew back into sky
—(later founded as The Royal Humane Society, 1774)
Like the fog
most people drift more than can be seen.
We were rolling in vast turbines
out to sea. Either the night air
was drunk, or we were, what was clear
was we could not see
past the dashboard
and you yelled “we’re flying” end to end the car an excalibur
through fields as if mid- air was no way to stop so we kept driving.
Like love that draws humors from the body
the feminine of fog is youngest leaf.
Vats of cornpone fry in stately ship.
We licked the language of the country
into pure atmosphere
like a silk lining torn away, that which disappears does not talk falsely.
Red, wet, a rose about to go opens so wide to stay
a little longer,
lies love war
more than rumor, time,
memory, often moist
as to evaporate fully, gunshots on the outskirts, crappy ashen pistols thrown to grave.
Icy boots trade in shadow
as if a history to tell. At another gas station as if with soft chalk I send a loving message
to invisible friends
who nevertheless I knew were there.
Cigarettes you kept wanting one a film rolling in one’s hands
or wired around in one’s headphones. Daylight forth and forewarding,
I am loving you our hands have not curled like this since babes.
End to end you yelled “we’re flying” I love you in the wave come to taunt you
At your throat. Hiss, mist.
Fuse the other, why loathe
When we can spit our breath
out so hard
we have the rain.
Pluralistic pink umbrella is every human tongue.
War 10
Running into the enemy, in the middle of the night,
one on one, all alone, without any others around
in mud, grass — but it is not the time for anyone’s death yet —
the fates in a busy, suspended void
Withdrawn commanders and their charges sleeping it off somewhere in separate
bunkers, on opposite outskirts of the city, where the fennel keeps its sightlines
messy, smelling of sweet anise.
We can begin again. Take off our sincere
uniforms, link arms, thighs touching, and regenerate.
Like newborn mammals born blind we are,
but we are not deafened —
We stumble, paw, and miss, we have the immobilities of newness,
We cannot yet show our love too passionately.