7.

 

Ex-lover, I don’t know why

I followed you around

with that weekend stick in my mouth.

 

If I took it on a bed, I had to

take it on the floor and in the

shithole registration booths and the home

offices, never in a car, often

in the grass, over the phone, with my teeth

 

out.

 

You, former lover, had everything going for you,

with those long thin feelers and that velvet exoskeleton.

 

You had a very pretty voice, but absolutely

no talent.  You liked to take pictures

out of other people’s albums

and call them your patricide theater.

 

You gave me a variety of muscle spasm.

 

You gave me a disease like lyme disease,

you put it in my thigh with your straw.

 

You corpse stunk, you puked fashion,

you stubbed whatever you could into

whatever I had.

 

Or I ran out of cloth.

 

It was a costume, it was the only thing

I brought with me.  It was a cape

and also a surgeon’s gown.  A fur

ruff, a latex harness.  It was practical,

considering the assignment.

 

You paid people to barge in on us.

 

You strung my behind with Christmas lights.

 

It’s important to think of them as Christmas lights,

you told me.