To you, the hard porn king about to start

a series of shots beneath the ankle,

the foot more important than your cock:

wait for it. Some one will come.

Horrible guitar chords, Esteban

with his exciting news, eponymous

the plumber, extreme the yank

and thrust of his wrenches into

the sinkhole. Beloved are his tangents.

Love me, the way teeth are known

not to take care of themselves. We

have them like friends we ignore long

enough to make them go. The body,

prone, steamy, the mise-en-scene.

The first step is meeting the surgeon.

The last thing anyone does is clean

the floor. You ask about keeping

strong. You slip the keyhole matte

onto the front of the camera. The

extraordinary stretch makes it solid.

It makes the feet hidden. Don’t call

it anything prettier than what it is.

Your hands are what hold the fists out.

Your mouth wants its words back in.

The Problem with Night Stories

To remember teenagers sneaking into moneyed places

is to believe the night capable of blooming around you,

obscene with its extra pistils, magicians saying If you act

like something you become it. Like you, only clockwise,

the fable disappears into the water without ripple,

as though some clocks might still, would lower

their faces against the wind and pass me. As though

you lived here, I will iron everything harder, as though

I knew how iron can be fashioned, soldered to locks

unopened, cautioned against fire, against wet snow,

bringing you to the older brother’s armchair, spider legs

splayed for the benefit of this darkening hearth. I trust

we will both be on our worst behavior, our well-being

invisible in the loyal daytime, a rehearsal for the evening’s

ticker-tape of betrayals. She is the middle girl, an odd man

out of time, happy for me, crossing the international

date line. They say Madrid is the highest capital

in Europe, when for me it’s always meant your car.

Let me go out of me, genius of limbless locomotion,

if you’ve not got enough proof, then it cannot be proven.

What is important is that everyone gets out alive.