The Bull (revised)

The body that holds me: four walls,

more, ambitiously conceived

like the monster it was created to hold;

corpse to house the bastard of a cursed wife.

Sins of the stepfather ensured a body

large and wrong, born as a vessel

to hold his guilt. Stupid beast,

with horns for gouging and hands

for grasping like the most helpless of babes.

No mother’s milk, only meat hoarding marrow

like gold in loose soil, and to that end,

I crack the bones and explore the bounty:

Paths unnavigable but by a ball of twine,

impossible, lonely halls carrying blood.

I walk between the ribs of my cage,

and await a hero who seeks my taurine head,

my human heart. Do not be cowed, hero—

I am branded brute, but I am less than a man.

The fisher king speaks:

Five million breaths each year

and though they are hungry, ragged,

I keep nothing from the barren land;

it knows my body starves.

Impotent and desperate, I fish.

My daughter and the king's man I tricked,

knowing their physical union

would bring he who'd heal the land.

In scheming this, I full earned my sore.

Grandfather'd and maimed, I fish.

The wound, not voluntary, never healed,

and could not be borne easy;

but patience is bought with water,

and held like communion in grails.

Wounded but rich, I fish.

I deduct and adequate the verse.
I subordinate my thoughts to language.
I fasten the stars and sing loose gravel,
ties to bind my frenzy like embraces
cleverly knotted by the Nemeans
and strangled bare by sanish hero.
I drip like lyme stolen from caves
and nostalgic for the touch of water:
dry, dry, dry in physique but, god,
wet in the mind and in memory.
I ripen and embrangle the notion.
I obsess the achene. Juiced, I parch.

Fungible

First without asking he took my hand
and though it was strange to see him
as a man, the motion was not accidental—
nor the lack of question unintentional.
Whip—the thing that imposed itself,
that first night-wing’d kernel of thought:
“This hand is too hot,” and it dropped
from dull phalangeal pressure
to the cavities in my throat. I swallow.

My whole body burns from blush
and the encumbrance at my side
runs red with fever, torture which relies
on trembling in sticky digits to remind me
that I have already attempted escape.
Instinct! Sentences extend and I hang
like accessory fruit or flattered reptiles;
a dull retort, barbed by keen-edged smile
as to slice. In terror, I gentle the words.

I find absolution in the purplish stain
under his ear, as though power were
couched in my teeth. When he touches
my sterile ribs, does it leave a bruise?
Or is the flaw deeper, fingerprints cleaved
permanently into skin, the whorl of identity
bone-deep and scarring? I slant my eyes,
as though in movement they might find you.

The Nature of Promise

What bold sun does to afternoon:

Evaporates slim golden flanks

In spillways where sun’s rays are hewn

By silver waves and concrete banks;

What moon does to the morning sky,

Hanging unseen behind sun’s rays:

It watches mountains crumble, shy,

And in repose it sinks away;

Fat bluegill dart behind the reeds

Like fingers parting folds of skirt,

Never departing, full of greed,

But, in their lust, they are alert;

Like bream and sun and hiding moon,

My body will hold fast to you.