part-time wife, part I
This poem appears in We Were Hateful People.
You can also read my translation of this poem into Russian: «внештатная жена, часть I»
in the gathering dusk
you made your own gluttonous bed
the night is an orgasm on wheels
festooned with dirt and peonies
it will pull out your teeth
it will flatten your bones
that painter you'd met
he measures what time left to him
in fasces of words
then flies off to roam
men are loam
women must dodge and burn
peacock tongues printed on plates
(malcolm x is gay
the fear and dismay at the gate
the ferry's perpetually late
to the bicycle merry go round
to herr cubik's soft rube of cold flesh
now the undergirding of
the superstructure is drawn
the coverlet crumpled and torn
in a rage there's a marathon
coming to town there's
a siren blares from the page