because every poem is a body
because every body is a list
of bodies: ingrown and outgrown,
worried, worshiped, warmed,
occlusions, papules, pockmarks
where the papules popped. Every poem
is about life, especially the ones about death, and life
is a list of lists: A and D, bucket and shit,
top tens and next-ins, and the list
goes on, which makes it beautiful,
and beauty is just a list of ideas
about what beauty is. Pain:
a numbered list, one to ten,
ten being “I’m already dead”
and one being complete, paralyzing elation.
Even the sweetest slice of Saturday
should clock in at no lower than a two-point-five.
I am thirty[inaudible] and a list
of words for nonsense: hogwash,
horsefeathers, gammon, tripe,
and several words I know are words but that’s about it,
words like “bdellium” and “uintaite”
that look mutated, and are,
because the dictionary is a list of mutants.
Choose one mutant from the following list
and make it your husband:
thermite
donkeywork
gentoo
plink
You chose donkeywork, didn’t you.
Everybody does.