Daydreaming of Chris Hemsworth

I feel amorous. I set plates
I won’t touch. The most boring, beautiful date
talks with his hands. A little door opens
between the buttons of his shirt.
Desire can be so banal.
Outside are recycle bins, flyers on businesses
describing how we mourn the Earth.
In my mind, Chris fires a rifle while hounds hunt
rabbits. Little red spots on the earth.
O huntsman with your beard and enormous arms,
after you turn me out, don’t up and leave.
Rabbits will have been skinned.
I long for so much. Today, I’m most pleased
not getting what I want.

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Haibun: Twitter Break. I Watch a Movie

Jackie, Pablo Larraín (2016)

There’s a scene where the First Lady is possessed by the opera of her life. It’s late evening, probably midnight. “Camelot” blares through The White House. Her comportment sustains a lyric fugue. In every room she enters is a luxe familiar texture. She tries on pearls. She drinks a glass of red. She tries on a blue gown. She drinks vodka. To take some control of her life, she allows herself to become an image for her country, a country that adores the image of a grieving woman.

Images of black pain are liked and shared.
America would make icons of black women
and have them in their best black every day.

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Careless

I didn’t realize you were cruising me earlier.
I am guarded

though not by nature.
Coarse sheets, rose quartz on an altar. None of this belongs to me.

Rain softens everything outside, white flowers become foam.
You cleaned yourself with my shirt.

While you shower, I play a performance of “The Cold Song”
from my phone: Klaus Nomi, 1982, lips painted belladonna.

I don’t remember the last time music was
its own pleasure and not a substitute.