The foldout tables for lunch at the rally had American flags
taped upside-down & pictures of Bush (whom they sneeringly
referred to as George II) with X’s through them. I was confused
as the purpose of this rally was to protect some rare breed of cedar
& the rarer hawk or jay that nested in it. If truth be told, I came
for the women, many of whom had other preferences
beside me, but there was this one in a sundress dizzy with paisley prints,
& who had leg hair thick & wavy. I edged up to her
beside the buffet table, a rich assortment of tofu turkey, succotash,
four varieties of couscous, & enough After the Falls juices
to make a river. She was with her friends, all of whom were ragging
on some absent member who was supposed to join them,
but my love, she held a long silence on this matter,

& I pictured falling
into this silence as if into a bed of clover.

The wind kicked up at this moment, & the propane burners
were snuffed out. Everyone’s hair was blown into their eyes
except for this woman, whose skin was a monument
to anemic luminance, & whenever I’m surrounded by such beauty
my right hand starts to tremble like a bull, & saliva begins
to foam at my mouth as if I hadn’t eaten in a week.
It’s the type of behavior that’s frowned on at these functions

because it makes one think of lobster bibs
dotted with blood, the smell of newly oiled machines,
some eviscerating, some separating cow or pig
organs down an assembly line. This was the type of factory
forever festooned with fog, whose cold, concrete
floor reminded one of the faceless creators

of Soviet-era architecture. Outside this plant,
my love was no longer my love, but rather
a moose or a yak chewing thoughtfully. Explosions
were approaching. Throngs of people whose clothes
looked chewed upon were yammering
to God for bread. In knee-deep mud,

I stood apologizing to the tiniest children,
whose mothers’ faces were worse than jaundice.
I had nothing to give except my love’s
hairy, broad back, a thigh as thick as Texas.
And so I raised the cleaver that once was a hand,
brought it down, as though April would never come again.



The Crudeness of Whales

The delicate lotus petal of the Chinese
Woman rests in the binding of the foot

whereas the hourglass curvature
of the Victorian Lady is in no small part
thanking the whale for its rib.

The whale, for its part, registered
no compliments, but also no complaints
as throughout time she did what whales do
best: scour the ocean for krill & pop out

her progeny. As is the case
with humans, the whale baby can not
tell his friends how tight his mother’s cavity
squeezed, & if like humans, it developed

a propensity for speech, for crudeness,
the baby whale, now not a baby but a large
bully at the whale equivalent of a pool
table, will simply lie about his mother’s,

as some humans put it, “snatch” & sink
the clamshell eight ball. It is hard to think
of our mothers naked, hair sprouting
from their heads, flowing down to shelter
their privates, each woman in their gargantuan
clamshells. It’s enough to make us

want to knife our fathers’ balls & sink them
well below the sea.