Oh, to be ready for it, unfucked, ever-fucked.

To have only one critical eye that never

divides a flaw from its lesson.


To play without shame. To be a woman

who feels only the pleasure of being used

and who reanimates the user’s


anguished release in a land

for the future to relish, to buy

new tights for, to parade in fishboats.


To scare up hope without fear of hope,

not holding the hole, I will catch

the superbullet in my throat


and feel its astounding force

with admiration. Absorbing its kind

of glory. I must be someone


with very short arms to have lost you,

to be checking the windows

of the pawnshop renting space in my head,


which pounds with all the clarity

of a policeman on my southernmost door.

To wish and not jinx it: to wish


and not fish for it: to wish and forget it.

To ratchet myself up with hot liquid

and find a true surprise.


Prowling the living room for the lightning,

just one more shock,

to bring my slow purity back.


To miss you without being so damn cold

all the time. To hold you without dying otherwise.

To die without losing death as an alternative.


To explode with flesh, without collapse.

To feel sick in my skeleton, in all the serious

confetti of my cells, and know why.


Loving you has made me so scandalously

beautiful. To give myself to everyone but you.

To luck out of you. To make any other mistake.