Two Poems and Two Photos

Late Prince

He takes the body out. He’s forever taking the body out and it makes you buckle all your teeth. Thinking helps, he says, seeing her number glowing in your palm. You would stretch yourself at her feet as the undeniable. He’s wearing your graybright gift. What if I let you watch? // How is it that you don’t know. If you could be your own evidence. Give softness he’s not even looking for. Reflex. Flight from the gut when she grips your wrist and yanks you out the street like you’re a pale brunette in a novel, a real american girl with a big smart mouth and not much else who counts for something anyway. // // Why do you call her a prophet? She’s not that much older than you. It’s just codenames. She could be your tall dirty king. Feathered, shirtless. / Between the planks above you: a shadow, then super-8 light. // A prophet because she said yes to the sword hidden in your pinions. A prince because she pressed your hands to the engine til they blistered. Because you kissed her eyes. // You find another way and you find another way.

Prince of Cups

I.

sinks in the water, unlit. My prophet who was never
my prophet, gone. Getting used to it. Reading the smoke between

leaves and the varied greens of the leaves themselves.

I was a city kid—I don’t know more than
the current of kids and rambling mutts loose between cars.

I decided to come here and that

matters somehow. I know the bullet. I’m the bullet

and the bullet’s daughter. Of course

it would be you, you said.



II.

When I leapt onto the table, you followed. When I kissed you on the stairs you kicked I blocked your foot with my foot bent my neck to kiss down your neck curved your hand. Kiss. Kick. Curve, catch, I pulled you over the banister, you rang out, no money and no shame.

Later: waiting for you to see me under a red and blue window, refusing to look at you.

I touched every place where you could feel my pulse with the finger oil of legal tender. What I wear when I want you to come to me without having to ask.



III.

Because you’re a simple man, you tie my body to the terrain, to your mother, to the high-waisted slang of your youth, to your wife, to our country—to your country. You tie my body to every glimmer-hard chance denied you and you carry us all as kindling, as the lord’s people, clinging to your back.



IV.

A woman who is a tower.

A formidable collar.

My other video and my other book, in private.

Know that I don’t blame you.



V.

Practicing alone, in winter. I slipped, cut my hands in snow.

Before you knew me.