3.04 / December 2008

for Thomas Aquinas Part readily the skin and readily the pulp, as readily the tongues wild apples bore, eviscerate the cores, and watermelon spit the pits they cannot swallow. Let this be done before the tongues wild lemons bore find no cores.

I bought it on impulse (eleven dollars!) for someone else, of course— a young thing back home. When I unpacked from my trip, I tucked the lace-bag package (the scent soft, water-borne) in my underwear drawer. Time passed, the young thing eloped, and I decided (what the hell . . .

I never asked you to remove your shoes. I asked you to leave them on your feet, as evidence that you were always so busy crossing a bridge. I asked you to tie your shoes with leather strips. And then tie the leather strips together into the side of a ball.

There is a man skulking up the side of the road: one leg lift, limp. Leg lift, limp. Leg lift, limp. My finger glides automatically to the power lock– shhh-schick—it’s done. Arms out, legs spaced apart in the effort to move, his hulking size intimidates me; my city roots start the alarm.

After a troubled night king Solomon summoned again the two streetwalkers and the infant before the magistrates, to overturn his verdict. He said, I foolishly presumed I could evade the postulate of symmetry in justice. Bring back to me, once and for all, the sword and balance.

Condo They were talking about their diseases. Dating in the twenty-first century, one of them said. I’m never sleeping with anybody ever again, said the other, and the first one didn’t disagree. They were sisters.