Two Poems
FISTULA
Squint suns flanged alien while I
fucked ruminant and
asked
several small incidence panes
the names of here nor neither—
the blueth be it,
isolate, and isotopic (here / there
gradations sprung unlovely
from clavicles (sprained) and
misnomer tapes played repeating in the atrium:)
or actually none of that,
rather sculltrap and shits
forcefeeding a plea-deal
while I salute my psychosis,
a deluge of crasseries,
and pluck sweet-laced loosies
from the Yemenis’ counter
sundered
by the Multiracial Fascist Alliance
and Mayor Eric Adams’ Oath
to Another Tuesday Beating
our shit cute violent
so my wife starts talking
soft at my kidneys
and we rut,
beseech this epidermis
as we all must,
in the dapple dopplered and spurting
that I suck gracious
to repeat titrations and translate
thrummingly the good stuff (A, B)
through the Godhead cunningly
to liquidate in equal measure
all trials of the Hopeless:
“no-scoped bitch your stupid”
brains are leaking bloody runnels
from your stomach teletubby-style
with just a bathmat hammer
and free stitches in the clink—
I don’t eat meat,
what the fuck do you think this is?—
I wreathe leaves for gentle babes
around your ears again,
come again,
no I said come again,
it’s the thing with the soft gun again
where I want to love you
with heme stinking and
riots’ flourish thralling all of us
to the Act,
the one gift,
cloacal
in its allness,
miniscule
in total import,
and yet
ABECEDARIAN
They are really going to do it:
float a sanitized cop in the fountain,
a daily brigade of septuagenerians
demanding access nay obligation
to obliterate indiscriminately, while
our hands are pity flowers
(essentially ticklish)
and The Suzerain of Abortive Principles
wiretapped my gasleak to frack it
but I’m absent for my own delusion,
holding pickets outside a longshore warehouse
preaching solidarity to Irish-Americans
who bought white at the price of cop
and don’t intend to sell low,
so I’m kind of just whining
“COME ON GUYS DON’T SHIP IT”
with importuning charisma,
feeling consolidation in my absence of nouns,
screening the Icon in tertiary vision—
one cold finger of autumn enclosure
as the atomic clock rolls over (back into October)—
and the Lebanese eat death named Israeli Litigation
they’ve claimed as an indigenous dish (est. 1948)
and the hole gets so big
you can’t even see it:
a wound that swallows
whole bodies’
further expansion
into nothing
like edges
of All That Is.
I cut children’s starshapes into my cheek fat;
floss shrapnel through complexions of
red vapor screaming turgid syllables
of SUBJECT - VERB - OBJECT
in a lesson of conceptual grammar
to the future radiologists of Midwood
who vote red and don’t fuck
but now perceive grammar as bones
of all perception—the individual subject,
the verb of its enaction, the object
of its ire—
My phylogeny reeks
without shame
You misunderstand this directive
towards order (that’s imperative)
Alkalophiles crust on a sea vent
Archaea arrange so slowly—
I thought that they were Us
could save Us in heat—
the smallest forms
eating blast refuse
in Georgia, Peru,
Bengal and Mariana
East Nunavut
East Palestine
West Bank beneath
a dozer
stroking homes
with pneumatics
fire freely
at whoever
enjoys new weathers
fresh to the 21st century
as it settles in its cast—
Slag
hardening first at its edges
condensing in the Center (
really Old Prussia )
salivates
gleeing from Sheol
where machines
w/ 4th-grade grammar
recognize the face
of anyone
from here
to Berlin (1848)
Nakba, Balzac, children
named Cate after monarchs
yet-living, ruling near the century
of Anglo whim and
the exculpatory playdate
filled with rifles in Negev.
My friends are all indicted.
The park is half a home
Outside 100 Centre
I feel good
There’s asbestos in the air
As Progressives convert
Prison
to
a Multi-story Prison
I think we’re getting ready to die
Still pointless, just not
To the one for whom it isn’t
Long may their recalcitrance serve them
Forever may it stick into their heart
I don’t know anymore
I feel kinship with mice
They come sleep in my hair
Scream treehouse lazy aleatorics
Scream pencils cutting
phonics in the stink
(It’s the only thing that feels good anymore)
(ever has)
Except that’s Not True–
boxes open,
cardboard or not.
Eat raw ventricle
when self crawls
out to lap at
that kind of time
in which the loom passes—
Point it then—
Aim—
And eat—
∩
J. Arthur Boyle is pleasant, co-editor of The Amenia Free Review, and adjunct at CUNY. Various works are in or coming from The Chicago Review, CRB, Fence, Spectra, Verso... Please see jarthurboyle.com.