Michael Pagán
You, the body's outer
The curved mule
of her back took
days to be gotten,
up through fields
drawn up.
Couldn't we rebuild
a strong enough concrete
bridge, simple
like a bow?
Sound summer, our
hands; the shore land
coming over as legend
creamed to her, disappearing
into her shoes
like old graves that
house them still.
Toothpicks
Out to prove your swollen
blouse always carried my
conversations in a box
like toothpicks.
Wondered to be in them
moving, moving like hot
light.The way a man forces
on his shoes, & you,
your nails always clean
like the clarity of tokens.
I sound woman-sad
about going to meet
you in that city of yours,
you, my toothpicks, on top
of all that madness.
You were the bottom
lip pressed into the bone
of my chin, making
bodies themselves; faces
that kept individual names.
Fractions are hard for
little boys like me.
The scream clanging slammed
a warm wave ally destruction;
we girls, he, the words repeated;
recall who conjure up rotund belts,
state danger, know & nevertheless,
as of had, the emanated was, to that
certainty called History, jaws
through pupil moments taking little:
Why?
I
What?
Banged the door, now warmth, he threw
it off his toes, there was a hole thought
of having needle & thread needle,
needle-strong crackling had broken
murdered the counteract in it, yet, while
they newspaper him, but on elbows
propped, dictating & did move up
and down the old stones, thoughts
sitting at his desk turned into print
country & stared at the door.
Cross-section watercolor board
swelled muscular nebulae the inflated,
grey far-away probably than science,
taught by such, the blackboard conditions
superstition and black magic . . .
sentence the screams.