Lucía M. Polis The Poetry of

This poem appears in We Were Hateful People.

my first twoscore years i have spent
with wolves  grown reticent and wild
this hirsute mug of mine has learned
to hold a prickly fear

I'm in a garden looking at the face
of those in petals' soft white lace
here mired  despoil'd by a bee
oh and the buzzsaw's snarl


she asks me not to look  not yet
and so I spend my days like so
interpreting her dreams  or else
I rest upon her tongue

where float the whitish lepidoptera
the green girl eats but pandemonium
two falsies like two centipedes
now rest upon a sill


the birds are fertilizing the proceedings
she sucks the marrow from the head
as  hudderly or suddener
I out my treachery

a hurdygurdy monkey tells us all
the sky's a rosy gold  it asks us
is a swan a goose  then it affirms
"I'd screw you like a duck


each motion in this house  a dance
unnoticed  like a book complete
with no break in the spine
I show you my bared teeth

do you sweet girl now take this man  do you
(as sacrifices go upon this heath
it is one rooted in
some recognition


still somewhere off  an old man pisses
by the road  the touch of tenderness
sometimes it pleases
sometimes she hits it but

sometimes she misses all while he cuts the
cheeses into small pieces  is there a point
in asking  if it will not
come to me