Lucía M. Polis 30 years
the poetry of

You’d think these were words from Sex Ed.:
      declension (n.)—unclenching, bending over
& conjugation (n.)—penetrating, entering;
                                       but no, apparently.

Instead, it is revealed to us that the former
is simply the variation of the form
of a word
              according to case, number, gender.
                                              (How boring.)


Consider the Rùsskoe slòvo for body:
                                              (It isn’t bawdy.)
It’s tèlo. And so,
                        about the body—o tèle,
                        to the body—k tèlu,
                        by using the body—tèlom;
         and so on—

It’s not quite your telos, my love,
but sometimes it gets you close.