Ouroborous Crouched near a rhubarb leaf, I was kissed by a stranger with a long tongue as she slid across the planted rows, her skin fragrant with hot, plumping earth, my hair curled orange as a pumpkin. She rose from the ground to meet my young finger with her teeth as the sun teased longing from all our flowers, I raised my hand with her sweet body attached, moving gently in its love, the love of beasts who teach the forests to the fortunate and willing, the love that is wisdom unutterable and dangerous, I marked her blessing as I toddled to the house where my mother washed the windows with a rag until she saw my gift and screamed for my father's shears to slice across her belly, our bond, the strange blood singing only after I am gone will you ever learn that little girls are tiny, little girls are prey. 1998   Ganesh You sucked my breasts like firm brown cones melting into perfume and smoke, your tongue moving like amber glistening. I gasped, pulling in scented air, breathing in your skin and your desire. I bent down like a trail of smoke too heavy with odor to disperse and soon your breath rang as well with pungent fume. The script of our smoke floats elegantly, spilling out of the ember of my mouth: may your thighs never lose their longing for my tongue, and your mouth never cease to sing to the depths of my flesh where you always find me and draw me out like a length of silk ribbon the color of smoke which has passed through fire and over water 2000   Here Boy There’s somewhere I want you to meet so don’t you close those eyes, don’t you close nothin, nothin at all open up with your heat and your breath I got my finger in your center and I’m dialing up god so you can tell her what a good job I be doing. No – yell it louder, baby, she hard of hearing, call her name, her name and if you lucky she bless you, she bless you right here. 21 October 2001   Poppet I am made with earth so I always remember my roots, so I don't need reminders like when you kick me to the ground. One long off time, I came so low my eyes got full of earth and a lot of things came about since I could not see. When the mud was cried out I saw even better than before that some people needs escorting out the nearest exit. That's where most of them end, crossing on out the doorframe, backwards, thinking I will do their pain on me times three on them as they leaving. So I ask you, why you, why now why try now to make me kneel and love you daddy by pulling out my heart one dark string at a time? You don't see so good yet, I'm your dry mouth love doll not worth spitting into the holes to get tender with it. Oh no no, get yourself used to something else quick, I am made of flint and kindling sticks, I don't need you to set me on fire Watch yourself, I am hot to the touch get them picky fingers out my chest, let the cowries rest around my waist, stop rubbing off the colors of my face You do not spell on this body, nor on anything that lives here, my soul and my house, there is the door, don't look back. 6 July 2002   All the Way Home I want to die sometimes like today when they told me that every night I almost die more than a hundred times an hour. I must have a colony of cats living inside me, feasting on fourleafed clovers and tended by my own orisha. They tell me it is my fat that is doing it, the fat is bad and is making you stop breathing. They push my head into straps and a mask, the mask covers just my nose, and looks like the snout of a dimestore costume. It smells like cured smoked pork when they turn on the machine, the air hits my nose and spills out of my mouth, I jump back, unable to breathe. I beg to be freed but every word is a grunt in my pried-open airway It's not all of me they want to pull to the butcherblock, but if they strip that fat I'll disappear. What they don't know what they can't see is that you can't separate my body from my identity like that pound of flesh from the Merchant of Venice, what do you think you'll actually have when it sits on your scale, soft and sweet and yellow as gold, and what will I have as well? In the meantime, they blow my house in as I wheet wheet wheet as I choke in my sleep and wait for the wolf, who tells me I should emulate the other 9 because this one went to market this one stayed home, this one ate roast beef, choices choices, you'll get none the wolf looks for the catalyst to set off the chain reaction: looks for the water to quench the fire that burns the stick that beats the dog that bites my leg to make me jump over that stile at last. 17 September 2002

Beast Licks for Shahn He asks the Daddy, sticking out his rear, "Please, Sir, whip me - one stroke for each year that I have lived on earth as bone and meat." And bone he has, and in it, pulses beat from base to tip of alabaster cock in time with throbbing heart and knees that knock. The Daddy watched his boy tremble, and knock words about, and stammer like a horse about to rear. The nervous boy grew hard and red as the cock that strutted round the barnyard year to year and counted suns like clockwork with a bray and beat - - and ultimately ended up as silent meat. Yet little boys make better fare than spicy meat when opportunity is quick to knock. When the Daddy stood, the boy's heart missed a beat entirely, and fully - head to rear - he shivered quite a bit for this time of year. Such unseasonable chill, however, spared his cock. The Daddy, too, had quite a thing for cock - - both bird and boy make quite a tasty meat - but only one cock lasts from year to year. As the Daddy crossed the floor, his boots did knock against the wood, and then against the rear entry of the boy whom he'd soon bite and beat. The boy moaned hard and DJ-scratched a beat using for a needle his dope-rhythmed cock and in lieu of hands, his syncopated rear - beats tight enough to charm leather back into meat and smooth enough to get the Daddy's fists to knock against the wall like bass beats sampled from a vintage year. And with the very fine canes that he purchased last year, the Daddy tore into that pulsing ass with a wicked beat, and then he held that boy to him, and their knobs did knock, and faster than a gun could ever hope to cock, the Daddy and boy were joined as one meat: the boy in the clouds, the Daddy bringing up the rear. In calendar terms, it was a mighty rear year and the Daddy got off to the ill meat beat of a fly boy with a killer cock knock. December 2003