i was crouching over my phone
waiting for it to tell me what to do
i was listening
to the food
move
thru my guts
i was looking at my legs
in a store
i had some shoes on i won’t think about
buying
it’s the little things
+
are my black cells asking what is ariana
why do her breasts swell in this town
where a gray haze sprouts over the lips
of the water trailing a chemical film all over
her stepping dripping from the shower
is anybody asking after the green
ivy hiding everything behind the alley
yesterday i stumbled
over a bear hoof
this time it’s Joan Baez
the corners of her mouth
do you even remember
i’ve been to bed with the wrong man
a sorrow is slackening around him
i don’t believe in the possibility of the wrong
man for i am the woman, the wrong one
watching the mute mattifying gentleness of those spruces
he is waiting for the morning
he awaits the morning feeds
extrusions
my fits
sick of turning my senses away
something necrotic behind the skin of the lower thighs
blacking out the world
+
Nostalgia
Portugal
Cup with
J T-shirt
Football
And I would
Of the neoliberal
Art performance
Game. In a Portuguese
Potato and they will
And spherical
Like the earth
A certain slender Iberian
“sick muse”
Or another
Forfeiture.
Decline
+
I forsook my dreams but they came back
For me like a scum I could never despise
Enough, missed appointments, theological
thirst, a feeling of freedom
experienced to spite my presence,
visible magnificence
very fast, floating in my belly
I perceived a burden
Peruvian
A beautiful poet
Avenues
Who did as I pleased, or my dreams
+
When I personally
Closed form. I can
Form that Clouds to uncover the
Man ring
His little finger
thick like a horse’s deep dimple
Screwed me
+
virginating
with my head
extracted yesterday’s
mange
took & gave mange
under the sun
aura thickening
+
I crawled
You do
Inwardly
So
much
But in
To weather
remonstrances
It loved
His glasses
Curls
Dinner & gin
Charging
Derelict yard
white pommel
the same tongue laboring laboring
+
first the beards were there
then the berries were there
ankles and docks
a crust of glass
licking the glass
windows in piles
stacks of white casement
she threw back the sash
a synthetic
plush
it could mark you
it’s not a brown mulch
it is the red
afraid of being pushed
across the border
where agrippa was waiting
he had become disorganized
scrolling boots by opening
ceremony and where was i
i was there
i was there and i
i too had begun to cling
to little pieces of trash
*Ariana Reines is a poet and multimedia artist who travels a lot and lives in Queens. Her books include* Mercury, Coeur de Lion, The Cow*, and forthcoming,* A Sand Book*.*
