Magnetism
I. Get Up and Go Out
Time to go to the mall, OK?
Just put on your clothes.
Put on your shoes, your make-up,
your Nez Perce necklace
that allows you to find everything.
Find me.
I’m behind this fence.
I’m setting apart the broadsides.
I’m making one kind of a tool
that will open all the locks.
I don’t want us to get lost out there,
in meaning.
In spite of the heat there have been
reports of bears, a solar system
pulsing around the parking lot.
II. How They Tried to Kill Henry
Drive-bys are converted from drive-ins
which used to be ‘theaters of sex;’
you don’t see many of these now.
All the sex takes place inside;
within walls, with the plumbing
it’s literally whitewashed from the scene.
(Said your ideology to me…)
It takes goods, it takes looks, it takes friends,
flowers from a regular joe.
It takes his freedom and it says to him
“there’s liberation in judgment.”
–and we believe that.
Now we have a bed: who’s hiding
underneath us? who’s there?
After all, these fields are pickets,
are fence, are incongruent. In dreams
you go on watching them forever…
III. Let’s Go
Do we grow in the mall?
Can you try on a few more shirts while I pee?
Yes, that looks good on you–let’s go.
I’m dreaming of Demeter while you–
hold it–I’m dreaming of Demeter.
Yes, the whole thing looks good on you.
Now can we see that movie?
Stay in line. I don’t know if I can evoke a sauna.
But I can dream. Where were you in my dream?
Oh yes. I had found a convenience store.
I bought green tea and a Snickers bar.
I crossed the grass. Demeter was reading,
elbows against the back of the theater.
Yes, I mean outside. The lines in those days
wrapped around and around the buildings,
millions of us outside.
–I thought we were surrounded. Let’s go.
IV. Doctor
Do we need a cortisone shot,
something to stop this itch?
I feel like I should stop.
Or you stop. A glass slipper?
Would be sweet.
I want to hold your sweet parts.
Lick your dirty foot.
There is a prism,
a billboard. Time. And you realize,
the Novocaine had no effect.
It was like the negative–
no sentiments.
It held us up, it threw us out,
caught our image and tossed our image
to the glass.
But that was just seeing.
Beyond this there is another
picture.
Beyond the drape
that is true, impudent.
A most charming picture.
V. Teaser for Anne Boleyn
Tell the other to come out of hiding.
I’m awake. I’ve had thoughts. In dreams
I’ve pulled you down by your ankles;
I’ve grabbed your throat.
So we’re not in the King’s retinue anymore.
So his pavilion slips into the water,
gives its shimmer to the greater shimmer.
So it bleeds. We must not mind this.
Follow the gaming pattern.
The steps lead to a sunny room, an apartment–
with three sides open to the audience,
the outside, the lush wildlife retreat;
the fourth kept garish, oversized, flat
with windows and knitting which presuppose
an alternative purpose. Something
was killed here something wild
out of neglect. Finally the chessboard
which means next to nothing which
(although it is small and sits on the table
between us) opens
along a central fold that keeps the two sides
as far apart as it can.
Do you know how to win this one,
Is it even winnable?
VI. Just yourself thinking about me
Look at your formatting.
Demeter is not appalled by this.
Demeter knows.
I talked to her in the car
about her sister. I sat in the car
at the top of the hill
in the police cruiser. I said (her daughter)
I said that we were lucky
to be thinking about the same thing–
that was rare.
And the moon the same moon.
I asked, whether she had parted ways
with her garden, or not.
*
I sat in her garden.
I said, I know.
the picture will hold you up
the picture will arrest you
you will not be able to forget
the picture
the picture will argue with you
from the wall
*
She had no talent for miracles
she said
(just for the mirror)
I said that was a lie
I was a musician
I said
*
try music.
now Two things:
Thieves
in the New American Gothic
have a tight grip on the handle
and the woman, she
isn’t smiling.
*
What do the others know about me?