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He sends me his ear in a box Wrapped neatly in blood stained tissue It lies, a decapitated lily Deaf to my horror. Fine red hairs sprout just above the lobe Like a pubescent upper lip Waiting to speak, Waiting to curse me for my Inability to return his obsession. But there were nights In his stodgy flat, the air Thick with pipe smoke Staining the Japanese prints Hung haphazardly on the walls, When holding close, I sang To this ear, my lips, My breath near enough To tickle the freckled skin And his hands like rusted wire Wound through my hair. Vincent, you said God is in everything. I search for him here, In this piece of lifeless flesh: Is that his reflection in the Waxen sheen, or his Thumbprint in the crusted Blood left from grabbing at the Cupped flesh as a school marm would, Tugging you up from your crooked seat. What strange sound Must play now around your head With no outer shell to Filter the music of insanity, The world's noise will Carve your brain like a Worm tunnelling through a tomato. The diseased mouth of your love Threatened to swallow me whole And I, a two-faced woman - Pity/Disgust, Turn away from your turpentine kisses, Color your canvas black, Or red that escapes the prison of skin The scarlet trickle from palm to elbow. My mouth fills with the taste of iron Till my very breath is gray as twilight And liminal to a starry night. |
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Premiere Issue (Issue #1), June, 1998 :
Santa Fe Poetry Broadside.