Voice Dhoti: Gong
As a rippling confection of impulse I skew
all the books,
want to version their rotten rigidity
chomping back boredom to make a cool waltz I could
swing to, I could be that kind of “poet”
an ideologue made of bent mud and wearing these bracelets
all over my hair. I slide the thick
ebony bands from my neck
thus name the enemy how stupid I haven’t
a face wrong enough for that fight.
I had a sense I was a dumpy quotidian
waiter, an old strand of spaghetti
whose nawabs describe what’s ornate about me
by not opening onto new mushrooms –
the gangrene’s mild – any ornament clings to it winsomely still –
it’s not by my feathers
which are someone else’s
pollution, or messy like fools
facing front in an awkward position
conceived summarily, badly so, still, contemptuously
ordered like art ought to thrill me.
Someone may be on her
angelfish casting about in the
doubts for a word, someone may be
jumping to conclusions to alter the sex
of the world, some collective may be
in the streets storming like a monsoon
& we’ll all be oblivious
but last night I dreamed of the undulence
and all these excessively decadent, sugary
color schemes emboldened with rose
gold & bracelets the hypnotist’s misery
butters the real
a salivary bomb rattled its teeth
on the ferret & I came to speak
to the boys that are mothers so speak to me
platitudes, crescents, burnable,
bendable, deludable
face in my hair
Otohime 