moneyflesh by sean s

after Fragment by Amanda Deutch

I.
mint women swigging champagne, fingertips
on glass stems.

Lost afternoon postmen arrive like koans
their callipygian mailbags, routes
vining gypsy through their shoes.
Won't you rest a moment from your tendrils?
I'll squeeze leaves here beneath your nostrils
rest your cork heels across my thighs
and is this your deuteragonist?
Hello mr deuteragonist.
So proglottidean, so oneiric,
a fork in the lotus, a sphinx' snake-eyed moan
and bones spilling their white.


II.
Evening makes my kitchen door window
a patch of ink, blueprint

reflections kinked up against the flesh-painted
world, my deuteragonist adopts a bruise's
pose, a sphinx ruminating
the clear marrow between her pigmented molars
What readiness do you have to offer?

It makes a wreck of us all, the same.
Just so.

The regicide dying, slain on
a bed of marks, a clench
like childbirth on his mind, koanic.

Or: mere
atoms. the removal of a benign, surreptitious
lump. cholesteatoma. a perpetual,
musical hiss in the ear.