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Every Cell in this Country Looks Like a Choice You Can Walk In and Out Of

Does a man with no intentions know he means

you only harm? If lodged in the scar were a pearl

of such precise damage no tongue could lift it—

Either I am talking about my ex-lover or

I am talking about the president. Every

choice in this cell looks like a country

he can walk in and out of. Here was a kind

of kingdom. If I call him "King," then he is.

If he is late, it is the Waste Kingdom. If a king

there's elsewhere a slave and, too, a mule

the grass can't grow quickly enough into

the mouth of. Beneath this same pulled-

tooth moon I drop my body like an axe-

head into a bed of blue-lipped weeds

the king's highway rides its joys through.

A crisis at my navel lifts the century out

of turn. In the buzz of his country's decay

I give a form to the chaos. He loves to say

he hates me, meaning his need to use me

confuses him. I want to say I love me

in the language of a place where

it is possible; this is a stark mood with few

conditions. The kingdom wears a skirt

of woods, busy insects to signify health,

a flag crested with & Fuck That MF. Yes,

that should have been its whole name.

Yes, I am delectable, and therefore

a spiral of buzzards descends in helix

or a whole horde of countrymen perfects

the custom of puzzling my flesh. He licks

the femur of a thing that many hands ago

was me; he says, "If you want to be enough

be both." He is talking about my bullet-

casket carcass, or he is talking about how

fuckable I looked laid roadside in red.

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