Climb in.
Feel those eyes upon you
and the nether mouth and throat
cleverly articulated, perfectly sized.
Soft skin, yours for the touching
wrists so tiny
that you can pin two
in one of your rough hands
bones a stark armature
for such flesh—
but—
you thought to keep your own desire.
Instead you find
that with my brown eyes
come my dark perceptions:

high voltage wires slicing across gray sky
scored by a double arc—a mockingbird—
with white wing-flash
a precision and menace peculiar
to Richter’s abstracted cityscapes
and Paul Celan’s straitening
his habit
of paring down the German tongue
breaking off those black marks until
only abstraction remained
and pain.
Yes, that—and to express it
my mouth’s mixture of aphasia and ease.

As for silk, do you think I care?
From behind the blood/brain barrier
I tend this beast-body as it bleeds.
You hunger for it?
Claim the ashes:
mind heaven-ravished
fading corolla
and a stigma
in every soul-bright pistil.