Karyna McGlynn

 



the 9-day queen gets lost on her way to the execution block

 

 

if ever a bathtub was Klee's Bacchanal in Rotwein (1937):         this was it


16 years after the 6th grade             Jane Grey and her Jr. High tormentors


played I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours            but this was their


"Saturn Returns"    (she explained this they were all at their most beautiful


that moment a thrown object hovers weightless at its apex)           full stop


diametrically opposed sex is only safe for animals        & the highly evolved


whenever she spoke     one bowed       the other said "okay, Ms. Dictionary"


like she was a porpoise laid clean   sliced    still glistening on the bed sheet


they serviced her  (the 6th grader who sneered, not the 6th grader, the 6th


grader, not the sneer…)       ok      here was the simple the wondrous thing


the elongated sense of sex had felt its blind way out the school doors &  up


the street       nudged its blunt indelicate way into the future        in which


what they really wanted was suddenly permissible    -          why apologize


in the face of these lovely reversals-?          "I am an impenetrable fortress"


she said it then   now she says it again   but it was & never will be the case

 

 

 

 

Don't look me full in the mahogany dimension of this

 

Just a minute, I swear

-be good.

 

my makeshift skirt lifts me (woman) up to yield

 

-one foot:

dingo, no

hippo, no

hooves but

not a horse's

broken on a knee

a bisuccubal tongue

-one more.

 

not to say "his bedroom eyes," but his bedroom eyes

 

a putto's toes graze                           -a red tentacle

not an elephant's

trunk coiling

not a squid's

jelly arm unfurling

to ply anything hypoxic

-my crown.

his crown.

-look this way.

look that way.

 

don't look me full in the mahogany dimension of this

 

-stop dissembling.

 

I don't relock     pomegranate shivved violent on my eye

 

 

 

 

Not that I'm neuter exactly said the child in the yard

 

I have a straight line drawn down there

more I'm neural

it said I stepped out from the green light

of the townhouse

that trussed the bed, the T.V. & the toilet

I stepped outside

into the yard which was enclosed by a wall

that's for the best

b/c my line and my 2 lines were showing

but my hair I said

was more of a concept there was a whiter

a smaller door up

above the bin & the grating & my 2 eyes

empty as quarters

rubbed smooth my body was only a wall

falling but a light

and a shadow which made something of

the shape a child

draws an evergreen it was coming down

over me & inside

the channels went round & round where

someone's thumb

was stuck to a dial & sliced from the joint

 

 

 

Do my legs make a triangle, is my accent aigu-?

 

 

“there was a shot glass with two brass buttons in it and that seemed proper”

 

-this, I think, is the picture of perception

-if I say am I not man-?

I am Devo & wear this energy dome

 

will I become better at math/sight unimpeded by convention or genetics-?

 

do my patches      my moue      the boat       of my bones

make tiny Klaus Nomis lie perfectly still              to twitch

is to pretend not to be watched          –when who, to note

wants to love me au naturel-?       no such thing anymore

our minds come equipped             w/ deluxe editing suite

fruit  now    I've  plumb  forgotten    where  I  come  from

and  to  say  that  I  need  you  is  only  equal  to "whip it"

or  "we  are  glass" can  I  rub  my  triangle  area  against

the  point  blank  of  want  is  a  disappearing  slide-rule?

no  such  thing  anymore  as  rejuvenation   but  recharge

the  digital  bars  which  power  in  and  out  of  my single

constant  –don't whine  the steady death pong pong pong