Souvenirs
Roberto out of sorts, scouring converted horse hospitals
for cyanotypes, frowning hippogriffs on Victoria’s
marmoreal mound (“billowing motherliness”), Soho’s
“piano nobile” above “jolly sous-sol[s]” of fornication,
falcons (pigeon-fattened) roosting atop odd fountains,
coward moon through sycamores on Tottenham Court
Road, Woolf’s formerly bohemian stomping grounds,
Nelson’s lions, Branston Ploughman’s, apricot Stilton,
Orangery scones, throwing off our clothes on going
indoors (no hesitations), hot mouth or cold frottage,
stoic Underground or hourly constellations, Astoria
(closed), Ghetto (closed), Metro (closed), Samson
Agonistes (Milton), personality disorders (borderline) or
neurotic devotions, perspiration on old sponges,
monstrance shadows, Lord Leighton bronze, foreskin
troubles, Tower rooks, soot- or blossom-covered
cobbles, microfossils (Devonian otoliths mostly), moss
growing on Roman columns, molds blooming on
windowsills, dog-eared books (Hollinghurst, Eliot,
Sexton, Shonagon, Defoe), mouths open to Fitzrovian
snow, broiled tomatoes, soggy bottoms, TopMan on
Oxford, cocktails on Old Compton, Yoko Ono (out of
context), Björk on Rolling Stone.
Bisque Head
Heterosexuals frame
one another’s cramped faces
in their smart-phone screens,
angling a few too-early
magnolia blooms into view
as though the woman’s head
were pillowed by uterine
softness: a locket shot
that reminds me of our grand-
mother’s odd little music box,
silenced by over-winding,
that concealed a cushion
of sateen underneath its tin-
punched lid—perfect
for our small fingers to lay
the disembodied head,
its flat black curls & salmon
lips, skin wan as an invalid’s,
down to the dark of her
one porcelain thought.
Leopard-skin Cache-sexe
after Edwin Denby
Our All-American grapples with the demon’s knopped
Limbs. Clattering along the scaffold. The smog of love’s
Pierced by mentholated light as in Tarzan the Fearless
The distant falls, and mid-meal his anorexic daughter’s
Pathetic call arouses; amorally stitched to leather,
Like spangles, like fetters, her black on soft-sweated yellows
And orange concealing pricks, butches a-sway at Springs
Under the stained band-shell, between walls painted fox
Pink; and waltzing revolves like a blond frosted head
Whistled at. The malignant hero’s golden belly
Strains against his Magic Mold Bodyshirt when applause
despairingly chlorinates the World’s Fair Aquacade—
The venison smell of women and platinum muscle men
As a low, savory moan ripples from the deep.
