Tuesday, June 21, 2022

Amy Gerstler


Amy Gerstler and friend

 

Sea Foam Palace

(Bubbling and spuming

as if trying to talk under

water, I address you thus:)

Must I pretend not to love 

you (in your present bloom, 

your present perfection — soul 

encased in fleshly relevance)

so you won’t believe me 

just another seabed denizen 

vying for your blessed attention? 

Some of us (but not you) 

are so loosely moored 

to our bodies we can 

barely walk a straight line, 

remaining (most days) only 

marginally conscious. 

We stagger and shudder 

as buckets of   blood or sperm

or chocolate mousse or spittle 

or lymph or sludge sluice 

continually through us... 

I love the way you wear your 

face, how you ride this life. 

I delight in the sight of you,

your nervous, inquisitive eyes,

though I try to act otherwise.

Being stoned out of thy mind

only amps up thy fearsome 

brain wattage. Pardon my 

frontal offensive, dear chum. 

Forgive my word-churn, my 

drift, the ways this text message 

has gotten all frothy. How was it 

you became holy to me? Should 

I resist, furiously? Is this your 

true visage, shaken free, flashing 

glimpses of what underlies 

the world we can see? Do not forget me

murmurs something nibbled 

by fish under the sea.

After dark you’re quick-silvery, 

wet /slick /glistening. Don’t 

make me chase you, dragging 

my heavy caresses, a pair of

awkward, serrated claws, 

hither and yon. Give me a swig 

of   whatever you’re drinking, 

to put me in tune with the cosmos’s

relentless melt, with the rhythms 

of dish-washing, corn-shucking, 

hard-fucking, bed-wetting, and 

the folding of   bones of other loves 

into well-dug graves...    may we 

never become lost to the world.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Natasha Trethewey

  Elegy For the Native Guard                                         Now that the salt of their blood       Stiffens the saltier oblivion of...