The Contortions, Part I

 

 

by Nicole Mauro

 

 

 

 

I.

 

O fuck

all your I’m, and the gone, i.e. the bathroom

you fled to to free

saffron 

from the mammal

while I over-watered the

palm.  All lack

–look down, please–

at the ass

tanned by the dawn.  If a head is wedged in it

(every cry

mewled between thighs is not that of  

bald infant), I romanticized wrong.  You’re gone, said a psychic

“to the desert.”  There’s

a dromedary sun there,

a scald

template, some vicissitude.  The hope is eyes,

engorged

pockets.  For example, cacti

and in the sky comets.

 

 

 

 

II.

 

To to–the place,

twice, I freaked

-out to,

behooved.  Dutifully locked in the bathroom, all

nozzles

on, I tapped

code on snatch, ganglia

fumed.  A psychic

said she felt nice, meaning you,

mid-east,

petting the hump

of a dromedary

at noon.  Folds of sand, she said, or perhaps

at a bazaar–in reverse 

of a hinterland. . .  Cacti in the corner,

succulence of

dunes.  Turns out I’m a 

shithead, been rubbing

the wrong

wound.

 

 

 

 

III.

 

Head up the ass–I contorted,

withdrew.  To to, intellectually, I

suppose,

it

dove in to

inform the smaller-grammed

organs

what it

knew–that they are viscous,

caught between

solid and fluid.  They just sat there, they

still

sit, all the while my gourd halved like a rectum,

plotted the calves

it would shit.  What a bestial day, I

ought

to be reminded of you.  O nostalgia, O

former splendor

of everything wan and

exhumed.  The sun, askance.  How do we

get the fuck

out of this

room.