Steven Minchin

even in hate I nurse you
it’s okay
if you don’t remember
you were recoiled

dealing at about 80 proof
with your red back exposed
glaring with the marks
of bottle coping, and your new friend

who’s raw glass edge ripped you
a surface wound, an outside emblem
of what you hid up front – of what
your lips hinted at above the pillow

it hurts!
what are you putting on me?
as you fell out
it was all I could see

the glaring color of your back
you’re back
and at the end of one my arms
there’s a fist

at the end of the other
a last grasp at tenderness

We’ve passed on

but
unrestrained you go on
on without control
continually igniting out loud
like the Hindenburg inflated
with vocal accelerants
erupting on their own
you go on spewing
-a disaster without concern-
like the Hindenburg with verbs.

We’ll go round like this forever
She said
She Said
This is dancing
And quickly took to the ground
Opine and flailing

He’s all charm
And she’s all giggles
And I’m all over it

Inserted and added via a twist
Now with He I and her are She

And we are all over Everafter

committed

there’s no other
there’s only this

there’s me here again
presenting

our It’s Always Been
Guarantee

a committed
return on

your vested scars
should they ever fade

The trip this year had us slip through malice
xGot it all over us
xxWe bought postcards
xxxWith pictures of bruises
And decided next time round not to book again

But we never gave up ideas of sliding past acrimony
xAs blue and grey runaways
xxWith a stabbing nostalgia
xxxWe’ll rip at our souvenirs
Not stopping to ask how we can scream and smile at the same time

Next year there will be a sudden honking outside
xSome sort of announced abduction
xxTo a place you first charted
xxxWith pictures of bruises
To illustrate the fun we’d have when we got married, angry and carried away

Paper’s for lists
Laptop’s for words

Predawn can change
it’s either waking up
xxxinvoluntarily
or going down
xxxsometimes forgetting

and often as it is
with language
there’s a pipe around
xxxbanging

Television’s for hearing
xxxthings like
“He didn’t tell us not to be jelly eaters
did he, Rexella”

Radio’s for drowning
out putting passengers
xxxaway
“Sick tree, rotten fruit”

xxxthat just in
xxxfrom Rexella

Word Perfect’s for assaulting readers
perfect words are for unsold magazines

xxxbut
when
sleep is shoved
into a small tube
lit and fingers move
you
…get this

wish you were
reading a list

I’m dating a man who’s immune to Novocain:

the only other man in my bar,
sitting across from me, beside the bartender-
he reaches over and grabs the Dilbert
While We Were
Downsizing pad on which
I had written, “I’m dating a man
who’s immune to Novocain”-
and tells me,
I have a purple and yellow yak in my pants.

And I look in his numb eyes:
I’ve always loved petting zoos.