Spindly spinsters with needle-point excess
Will knit me a shawl,
Will be my Amaranta.

How clever they are! How neatly they slice and trim, plunge and stitch!
But oh, I do not envy them
For no man makes his own demise alone.

Bayou and bleach blonde cheveux
Poised on the side of a map.
With my fingers trembling I turn, I turn, I turn the page.

Why a collar-bone, why a wrist?
Why the slightest flash of a slim smile?
It drives me, plunges me into the gut of melancholy
That it shoves itself down my throat.

When the barren of my belly comes up over cakes and tea
And I precisely pinpoint this anxiety
They give it another name; they reduce it to articulacy.
But let’s dismantle its literature anyway;

It will never be honest.

When, blustering about me, the winds hold tightly to my waist,
I squinch my eyes and think of Sicily; one day I will go.

This world is a great ocean, and its current is always being cut by fins.
It matters little the impact of one puckered mouth,
The subtle embrace of one set of gills.
But the water is stagnant, and sickly, and cold
And spreading cigarette butts and bottles into the stomachs of the sea.

Attending on the desire for violence, I find recompense
In forceful throttling of my impulses.
Oh God, let me wrap my hands on their goggly necks
And feel their organs crumble into a wet dust.

You will not let me sup of this repulsion, and sew my knees ensemble
So at my door you paw and prod -
Scritchscratchskritch.
I have no saucer of milk, only curdled cider and dead fish, go!
Beg your supper from another home.

You tame nothing if your beatings
do not elicit moans.