“Bad Body” and “Perpetual Stew” – Michigan Quarterly Review

“Bad Body” and “Perpetual Stew”

Bad Body

The heavy gallop of a strong animal			
                                             however fluid
is always muscled	slow. I admire them	  those whose insides and outsides correspond 	
seemingly seamlessly		
                                             the costumes of aura.
I feel captured by the need for your attention 
and you yourself are free. 
You move around	decide for yourself	walk through the trap lines 
of my covetousness as if they are finish-line streamers. 
In every photo of us	you are flirting with the camera 
                                             and I am watching you.

I work on my love for you when we are separated. 
Something in me turns to pay attention. 
We writhe
                                             try to make it more than percussive instinct. 
Because it requires a partner
                                             we turn it into compliance or collaboration. 
I try so hard to prove our exchange doesn’t create a loss of value
                                             a deduction from the wealth of self. 

I can’t rest
                                             can’t understand. 
If everything knowable is the product of every ensuing moment 
then I willingly participate	pile up responsibilities. I come to know someone
then 
                    one day I see them behave as a stranger. 
The world is always turning unreal	I feel
                                             turning unreal. 
I wish I could hear you think my name. 

Revelations being disproved by revelations
stacks of once-useful truths. 
I emit to you from the past. 
You like fantasies where you go back and change me
where we collaborate in a staggered sequence.

                                             I create my own superstitions. 
I receive again and again the ruse	that struggle for unity. 
I don’t make a pact	summons	or prayer. 
I just have this text to call you	an eventual pile of dust 
                                             that I’ve imbued with my satisfaction. 
                                             You are the love of my desire
the fuck	the attention		the dream
the unequaled. You want me 
                                             so much that you shock me.

Perpetual Stew

Foolish girl	pushed around. 	
It’s all symbolic but the symbols are improper. 
Systems are largely true 	they say 	and I think of a dump truck 	
disgorging a hill of tiny gravel. 	Captivity	—	
thinking without purpose. 	
The language of knowledge masks itself 	
as newly-discovered		only for the fit initiates. 	
Dear culture	the study of you is exhausting. 
Out of this object 	a chain-reaction simulation	being 
          ourselves		seeming to each other. 
She was an overflow		body dropping down as a pile 
of pebbles	slow bell’s dangle 	muted by fog		
a bush of birds gone silent from a diving hawk. 
She was disallowed from speaking
so listened 	and listened 	until all 
she could hear was the unfading 
movements of a monumental 	
sum	a life-giving brine full 
          of decay	suspension of totality. 
The whole is always harmonious
          whether growing or dying. 
But is it just? 	You 	who I’ve loved	you 
can always resist the temptation of looking back. 
And me	 I’ve never been hard to get		
          have walked immediately 	toward every 
          debatable bid for me.
I’ve been trailing behind 	you’re all I see when I look. 

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