Little Song

          Given what I am,      if
not cannibal for, animal for:       he
                        who let go a door in me, be-
cracked my sternum to a hundred flashing moths, oh handsome, oh — Truth
                    be told:      I hungered this, needled it out, I
        stretched for this.        Always a field stirs, would
                                                     stir, for want of being filled.        Dwell
of me, my Eden, my Hook.        In
                                    pleasure weren’t we founded?        At the
                           start didn’t we blend and blur?    I would be his bravery, illusion
            of his fearlessness and his fear.    Given what I am   only,    of
meat: cut fire:           the inconsolable:           of these, Him.
 

Epitaph on a Stone

Like you, I was born underwater.
(I lied: there was never a stone.)
Like you, I was born but that’s not the half of it:
I lived. Lord, I lived. Like a cancer, I crept
sideways. Like a scorpion, I lied. I lived
the way a problem lives, openly, so much
earth wanted me closed. Don’t you know the dead
are not easy? Don’t you know they crave?
I stepped out of the water (I was made doing this) slick-
skinned, fluent, a character: my eyes twice
haunted, my humor, my voice — and can’t you hear
shackles running the length of my voice? I was born
in a minute, in a panic, on a whim. A mistake,
I mean. A choice between this world and a body,
pretty fault where a heart should be.

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“Little Song” and “Epitaph on a Stone” are from Boy with Thorn, by Rickey Laurentiis © 2015.  All rights are controlled by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA 15260.  Used by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.