by Sarah Arvio
a bomb
made of your atoms
I have a diamond
you have an atomizer
of the anatomical
& soul
being
concording your soul
atoms
into a sole
bomb
for atomizing my soul
with its adamant
gleam
I’m toeing around
& avoiding the pulse
so as not to jig
the trigger
or tip the jigger
this is a soul bomb
solely for me
arraigning my brilliance
why do bombers
bomb
a beauty body
Hitchcockian
stop staring stop staring
wagging your head and talking lies
why don’t you do some staring at the stars
even your cock is a crowing liar
trying trying to hide your cry
the cry of a bad hatching
that hatched you
as you are
not as you should be
can’t you fall down the hatch of your heart
into the hole of the hell of it
can’t you hitch your cock to some high pole
a maypole for maying
not dismaying
can’t you hate your hatcher and not me
a hatcher is a mother
yours was a hatcheck girl she had all your hats
and would not give them back
oh somber sombrero
and your heart is the worse for it
even your soul is hitchcockian
though he had a bowler
you have a howler
give yourself a little heaven
as you should be
not as you are
go hitch a ride on a star
Aguántate
Did I want a gloveor was it love
a globe of love a lobeno not a glove
I wanted a globe a worldI got a glove
Take off the gloveTry on some love
This is global and localThis is my life
I want your bare handson my lobes
instead you’re lobbing mea lot of hell
So you like making lovewith gloves on
How bad it feelsas hard as hooves
I’ll give you the beefI’m all beat up
Too much to bearmy gloved boy
Here’s the skinnyI want some skin
but love mewith your both hands bare
Oh beglovèd boyturn a cheek
Tu Mi Vinci (or Hang)
You hang me on the hanger
of your anger
like da Vinci’s triangle
and vinci is vanquish
and vanquish is
like anguish
and hang
is what we do
to criminals and clothes
Is it a crime
to hang round your neck
staring in your eyes
and kissing your lips
Here I am hanging
naked and splayed
I’m hung up on you
you’re hanging me up
There’s no other angle
I’ve flung them all out
You’ve taken my self
and you’ve hung it
in the triangle of you
where I’m dangling
I’ll go away
in a new set of clothes
for a cocktail or a crime
does it matter
but please let me down
off your hanger
Oh love let me be free
of your anger
I’ll hang a round sign
Now I Am Mine
old words
you can’t get the hang of
Sad (or de Sade)
So it’s over nowthat’s what you say
How sad to saywhat isn’t so at all
nor should it beI’m saying this to you
I’m saying I love youand you love me
It’s sheer sadismto say this isn’t true
which is what you sayat least once a week
wanting to persuade meto be sad like you
My desideratummy sole desire
O saturnaliaof sad desire
I love you satanicand sweet as you are
siring and stirringmy distraught desire
I’m your Sadieyour sweetheart your girl
How could I hate youbecause you’re sad
Sad to say to say and doI’m sorry
you’re sad and sadisticyou’re sorry too
Or I think you’re sorrythat’s my sole hope
Monsieur de Sade was sadwe all know this
That’s how he gothis satisfying name
And aren’t we allam I not aren’t you
wanting to livea sane and hopeful life
Oh my Sade How sadyou are sad I am
Truly sad to seeyou are as you are
Shoe
I was going to meet my own death
and it stood me up
Or that is I stood up and said not now
Some days I know I won’t stand for it
Can you stand the thought of being dead
some days I think I’ll take it lying down
Sometimes it’s good to take a stand
though I think I want a standard-issue death
Shoe in shoe out without a horn
or play me a horn as I go and come
Or maybe not you but someone else
whose job it is to usher me forth
Stand down I don’t know what this means
Stand up and soft-shoe across the room
The issue is well do you like your life
Oh hand me a tissue I do want to cry
There’s no such thing as a stand-alone shoe
There are always two to cover feet
Think of not knowing how to feel
think of that while dancing on your heel
Death might not be up or even down
it could slip in sideways it could shuffle
It could stand very still
like a life on the stand of the world
Do hand me a tissue or a handkerchief
I don’t know whether to wave or cry
I don’t know whether to live or die
it could slide sideways after all
Like two shoes dancing in the living room
or two heels hopping in the dying room
Handbag
I felt some desire and I lost my cents
it was expensive to feel so much
I lost my sense and my money I did
not consent though it was consensual
It was a con and it cost me my self
I was selfless I was trailing a scent
I was moaning but not for the money
and that’s a mistake I lost my sole take
and now there’s nowhere to stake a claim
I’d put a stake in his heart but I can’t
O Bacchus will you dress me in grape leaves
I’m back to the bar to begin again
and needing a quaff of some rich stuff
and some hair dye and a bewitching scent
and all that is sensual and cunning
without a cent or sense in the world
and nothing in my handbag but my soul
Tanager
This was the year I saw th
e tanager
flitting out from behind a tall tree
like Tanny Le Clercq wearing scarlet
and then turning she twirled and was gone
cutting a tangent through the sky of my life
and the effect was as tangible
as a trip to Tangier
This was the year
of bright change
the year of the dress
the lovely fire-red dress
and black shawl
that would take me
to the sunset or sunrise
And it moved in me
like Tanny Le Clercq
fire tones leaping
in a fiery thrill
Wouldn’t you live
for a tangential thrill
that goes to the skin
and bones and sex
to all the bright points and
colors of your life
I had seen it in books
—the tanager—
a bright black-winged cry
bringing me up
to its tablet of joy
its template of joy
its plateful of fruit
The tangerine tanager
that should be its name
and how do I eat it and dance it and do it again
this once-only moment of life
Red Dress
It’s wrong to live wrong I was thinking this
and wringing my hands I wrung my hands
Wasn’t it right to live right and to write
about the right life rather than living wrong
and writing about the wrong life Which is
righter which is wronger The thing is
if you have the wrong life you don’t want
to tell thinking always that somehow you
will right it Righting and writing it’s a kind
of redress a new dress I’ll put on when I
rewrite my life I’ll run out and get it now
while there’s still time a red dress for joy
a red dress for redress and I’ll dress you
down as I walk out the door You’ll ring
and ring but I won’t rush back I won’t
write back You’ll be right and I’ll be
wronged and that’s what I’ll tell if I get
the time but not to you you won’t be told
You can read my redress in the papers
I’ll be out on the town in my red dress
Peacock
It sounds like a part of the body
doing something that it has to do
not like a vegetable or rooster
more like the male part of the male body
riffling its wheel flaunting its eyes
every feather the figure of an eye
many like the arms of a Vishnu
many like the breasts of Artemis
O heaven and all the lotuses
the hues of all-prismed reflection
with a keen that pierces the garden
And this is the bird with the name
that’s also the name of a penis
that is peeing the peacock peeing
Why don’t you meet me in paradise
the place of the parrots and dice
the place where we go to die and sing
the place where we go to sing and die
Apparently it’s all pure there all joy
pure as my heart when I look at you
right here in the throne of the pleasures
The peacock tilts its fathomless eyes
and then folds its great fan and departs
Garden
You could say a garden is a garden
but guard against the place where anything
is what it is and nothing more A garden
can be avant-garde or not avant at all
or from a vantage that never mattered
except to the gardener and no one else
It could be a place where Adam and Eve
were happy though not yet fulfilled
Nor would they ever be if history tells
us anything at all If the bible can be
called history Let’s say it can because
it belongs to the history of our souls
And so there they stand naked and the snake
and the penis are one and the same
It can snake through your garden and take you
places where the flowers sometimes go
to that bliss of fragrance and bee-buzzing
or else can be a hisser or a hater
or a pisser and really mess things up
and mow over your pretty violets
And while you are there guarding against
the gorgeous or the garish or whatever
something insidious is going on
and insinuating and undulant
Much as you may love and guard your garden
there is no protection from its power
En garde! Kiss the gardenias and hope
Regal
There are some violets in the grass
purple and pretty and in the grass
and now I notice that the violets
are the color of a bruise
They are pretty but not quite a pensée
and violet we know is not quite purple
They are a posy of my violation
or the bruise is the color of violets
and you are posing as the lover boy
who brings the posy of all pure joy
This is a position a person can take
almost as joyful as anything
and voilà this is my enviable life
the veil of my lovely and loyal life
This is the question I’m trying to pose
about life behind a veil of invective
I don’t want to say a vale of tears
or a walk through the valley of death
Shouldn’t my life be inviolate
not kicked and insulted and royal
the purple regal of the royal house
Aren’t all our lives made to be holy
and royal almost always is violent
The queen of the grass is deposed
Nonpareil
for Linda Ollerenshaw
How I wish I could be something else
I seemed to change I had to have changed
and yet plus ça change plus c’est pareil
I wanted a cup of dark tea and a nonpareil
I wanted a life without a parallel
a peerless and unparalleled life
made only of chocolate and sugar
on a dark night pearled with stars
and I got it just like everyone else
as though getting what was coming to you
could really be what anyone gets
I was on the parallel bars turning
over my own self and then turning back
but that was many years before I changed
into the one I am now who’s turning back
through her own life to find the nonpareil
as the past smokes up from the dark tea
Did I get it just like everyone else
with a sip of dark tea and a nonpareil
Am I both the same and something else
or had I gotten it like no one else
exactly what was coming and nothing else
Sheepfold
It’s so cold here and there’s the snow
he doesn’t like snow he’s from the tropi
cs
there’s ice to be precise there are icicles
he wants it hot he wants the tropics
he keeps saying it over and over
she is thinking that this is a trope
or de trop de trop
she does know she doesn’t know
he does know he doesn’t know
say this all fast and it will be as snow
as white and cold and as ephemeral
all of their truths will be as snow
the trees are black in the winter woods
and now they are passing the sheepfold
white sheep and black sheep mingle together
they are a tropism all turning one way
and fold is a word that she desires
fold and wool are things that she desires
but there is much cry and little wool
the sheep are running as a herd
their little hooves pounding the white snow
she needs to be careful she thinks or she’ll die
of exposure out here in the cold
the ram is out ahead there’s only one of him
but here they are now the two of them
you snowed me she said which meant he had lied
Rodeo of the Rose
It’s like I fell off the horse of my life
I was horsing around and he bucked me
I went over sideways or backwards or
I don’t even know how I went but I
went It’s like you don’t know your own horse
It’s like you’re riding along and he rides you
He keeps at it and at it till you buckle
and break a rib or a toe or a heartbeat
Never mind that I wanted to be soothed
and suckled never mind that I wanted
to ride and ride replete with life joy Ah
ah Ay ay all the sighs and gaspy breaths
when you’re riding full out on the joy path
But there are folks who can’t bear the joy
the rippling riveting enchanting joy
They’ve got to buck you till they flip you
They deride you and they deride themselves
Whose horse was this anyway Wasn’t it
mine Or was there someone else somewhere
leading them in and handing them out
glad-handing the folks at the rodeo
A grand master of disaster and desire
carrying a whip and a full-blown rose
