As my body spits you out
Once my meat, you are now my poison
And all in the blink of an eye
It's time
From the slit in the blanket, black
I see
the hint of a light which blinds me
Whatever has light shone upon it itself becomes light.
I’m sick of grieving you, phantom man. And yet, you are not dead, but still alive,
Walking this very earth, your feet still full of motion, your legs still carrying you,
To another woman, another country, to another anything but to me.
Just yesterday you arrived at my house, waited for me while I brought the dogs home in the rain,
Sat there at the table with a cup of tea in hand,
Still wanting, still needing me. Still a ghost, a spectre in my kitchen.
My reality has become torturous loving insanity,
And yet it was I who took the axe and severed you from me,
I who broke these cords of suckered love.
Now I swallow you whole, take down this black medicine and let it destroy me,
Because if this is all I am then let me die now.
Safe Sex
Donald Hall
If he and she do not know each other, and feel confident
they will not meet again; if he avoids affectionate words;
if she has grown insensible skin under skin; if they desire
only the tribute of another’s cry; if they employ each other
as revenge on old lovers or families of entitlement and steel—
then there will be no betrayals, no letters returned unread,
no frenzy, no hurled words of permanent humiliation,
no trembling days, no vomit at midnight, no repeated
apparition of a body floating face-down at the pond’s edge.
Natalie