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LOBOTOMY

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I’m not kidding.

I told my friends:

This birthday I want no cake,

no books spread on my lap like eagles.

 

I want the operation;

that velvet blade,

that feather that dips and cuts.

 

I want to love

with sparking gelatin cubes in my head,

quivering

like lovers waiting

for the final dip and rub.

 

I want the operation.

I want to dip and rub

without seeing eyes

like cats under cars.

Without hearing voices

like the small smack of fish lips,

saying, I want to cry, but it’s been so long.

 

No joke.

I want the operation.

I want an even tan,

and a wetness like pinesap between my legs, forever.

​

SNOWED IN                       --for Ivan Illich

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There is nothing left.

I hold myself like an empty goldfish bowl.

 

Today I took my teeth to the dentist,

my body to the doctor.

I took my mind to school,

like an angry child,

sat it down.

 

I took my pain to the drug store,

my sex, throbbing and subsiding,

like a wound,

to my lover.

 

There is nothing left.

 

My body flies apart from no center.

It flaps like vines loose on buildings.

I try to tie it together,

to bring it all to one place that I dream of

like the ocean I smell one hundred miles inland.

 

But I wait for my bills,

x-ray results,

pap smear returns, to tell me how

I am.

 

If I am

well enough

to go out with my friends

and drink until I think it is snowing,

snowing so hard I can’t leave,

like when I was six

and so small

and not

a bunch

of crazy vines.

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