The Other
You come in late, wiping your lips.
What did I leave untouched on the doorstep—
White Nike,
Streaming between my walls ? Smilingly, blue lightning
Assumes, like a meathook, the burden of his parts.
The police love you, you confess everything. Bright hair, shoe-black, old plastic,
Is my life so intriguing ?
Is it for this you widen your eye-rings ?
Is it for this the air motes depart ? They are not air motes, they are corpuscles.
Open your handbag. What is that bad smell ? It is your knitting, busily
Hooking itself to itself, It is your sticky candies.
I have your head on my wall. Navel cords, blue-red and lucent,
Shriek from my belly like arrows, and these I ride.
0 moon-glow, o sick one,
The stolen horses, the fornications Circle a womb of marble.
Where are you going
That you suck breath like mileage ?
Sulfurous adulteries grieve in a dream. Cold glass, how you insert yourself
Between myself and myself.
1 scratch like a cat.
The blood that runs is dark fruit— An effect, a cosmetic.
You smile. No, it is not fatal.
2 July 1962
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