Mosquito (4 page)

A static-voice hammers thick over the leafless tree's growling

 

Sheets are sap-streaked like bark

 

Tonight—brass-knuckled love, weep & birthmarks break
from the self

I don't care that you sleep on your stomach, groaning
fortune-cookie koans all night

The limb's edged knots & I come just thinking of you

 

Emperor of gasps, paradise of sweaty face

Feed me the slow lesson of flowers, plum pits knocking
teeth & dark

 

My skin is everyone's magic trick. How couldn't it be?

 

What sad-luck damage would you trade for taste?

Melodies drill deep wells in the chest

As a child I worshipped chains worming through gravel. But
now

 

Is sugar from a heartwormed pit bull, benediction slaps
from tattooed gods

Kiss my reflection into brick walls, carve me golden & throaty

Streets are gorgeous with pissing dogs, red-petal tongues
& grandfather cartwheeling with muscled legs

 

He didn't feel the heart's disintegration
on the slick tile floor. A percussive

 

axe cracking the bathroom door. Bleached radio
piercing the sun with a tune I'll never remember

Touch the photo that peels clothes. Hunger for it like bare
feet

 

On sun-slivered pavement, cricket legs longing for rubs

 

Slip me into that train-track bed, torsos weaving

 

Wicked & blue. City of fence-rust, streetlights bulling for life

Lopsided with fog, what must passengers think staring
down dawn?

 

Bodies arched into something only sewers can name

 

Orchard of polished ghosts, flesh pimpled
with rain

Teeming wordless & terrible, grief dangles
from concrete fruit

My yard is frail with crushed cans, flat-sailed rubbers

 

It is the felled redbreast's grass-jawed grave

 

Bottle caps like diamonds buried in a finger-box of ribs

 

Jigsaw morning, the branch hisses mud

Trodden & cubist. Too much gesso & not enough light

 

Paint my nothing portrait, use amphetamines

 

Paint the gift of the neon wasp

It is the year of the dismembered horse
Bury me with bone-dice instead of eyes

I'd strip, peel myself to show you
the jukebox of hearts. Still,
you'd frown, say that's nothing—
a foot pressed into river mud,
movie dialogue edited for TV
where the bad guy turns cotton
candy. Boxer-veins streaking
his forehead, he aims the pistol,
shucks, he says, mouth twisted
into fuck. Don't stop listening,
it's a train chugging runaway
on ecstasy. Overflowing fishbowl
or uncovered cage, you'd ask,
ear to my ribs like a doctor.
You'd point everywhere,
confused until I tell you,
I am hi-fi, all of me is surround
sound. I snap fingers & the world
is xylophones. Feel my wrist,
it is a coda dragging its feet. I click
my teeth like cymbals. Hold
your hand to my chest, I'll baptize you
in the river. But we have to start
now. Here—take off my belt.

Do it
, the river wept
this morning.
No one will

 

know
. I burned
the autographs.

 

Licked crayon-wax
from my fingers

 

to celebrate waking.
I wallpapered nude

 

so when I flipped
into the down-dog,

 

I became the jumping
bean's slow cousin.

 

This is the New West.
The la-la in sagebrush,

 

a magic-strummed scenery.
Last night was guns & confetti,

 

an elephant-sized centrifuge & we
were spic & span, tongued safe & clean.

does not keep him from feeling
the woman within kick and claw.
His habits are not his alone.
Behind the sunglasses' missing lens,
an eye blinks sunburnt. He reaches
with perfect manners, right arm
stealing tomatoes from the salad.
Left sleeve sewn to his side, he is spill-proof,
enjoys tart wine in chiming glass.
Locked away, a shoe befriends half a scissor,
collects pecks from a lonesome lovebird.
A pant sleeve pinned above the knee,
he looks as if he's been jumping
one-legged in floodwater, saving
only one of the twins. He wears
the up-all-night face of singles tennis,
orders individual knives from infomercials.
One sock. One nostril. One glove. One arm.
Wave to him when he holds nothing.
At happy hour watch him handle the two for one.

Welcome to the carnival
of misfortune, drunks singing

 

in sweat-thick air. Howling
like locusts, they point at stars,

 

map the never coming home.
Believe me when I tell you

 

I've stolen everything.
Have a goldfish, I am yearning

 

to share the moon. Billiard balls clack
& cars groan away. Eight-ball,

 

side pocket & the ghost-ring
doorbell. Under streetlights,

 

touch is pyrotechnic Braille.
The blues are crumbling—fiddle,

 

hawkweed & horn. Blow that
trumpet, baby, use my spit.

We litany the air with bottle caps, swallow
slivers of glass & rend our names. Husked-cathedrals

 

of horseflies purple & flash, rattle the headlights'
dusk. Skinnings from their bites piled high.

The choke-collared dog pants its music.
Coke machine, concrete, a freckled boy
shoots gumballs into the shadows.

 

Hold your breath & it isn't impossible
to hear the bent-back fingers. Coat hanger—
blade-song fashioning bone.

Nostrils ringed golden, a girl snorts baggies of spray paint
& her heart freezes—confused & thick with pleasure. Pallets
for sleep, box cutters for midnight. Her lovers spit
by the dumpsters—blame luck & stroll, all switchblade lips.

The radiators burst irresistibly. Press for me packs
of ice—I will never feel. Go deeper,
the sky booms when I tear open—
the man across the way whipping dishes
from his third-story window. Bawls & begging
for more rising from the stagger-throated street.

—
after Michael Burkard