Nine Poems from “Gestures and Preferences,” A Fibonacci Sequence of 33 Poems

The Gesture

It
has
been made.
It has not.
It is soon to be.
It is becoming what it is.
It is what it is, whatever it is, and is like

it-
self
but more
than itself
so far as it is
what it is, what it means to be,
and that which it will then become, apart from that which

is
what
it was,
whatever
it was or was not
or was trying to be and is,
for it was made to mean and is beyond its meaning.

As
in
Adam
audacious,
anxious for apple,
abjectly aroused, abjuring
innocence, addled by asp, abscised by abscission

in
the
ache of
all access,
the strain to abstain
from abundance, the awful hiss
of adumbrations, and the artless acquiescence

for
which—
aft the
affliction,
under the arbor’s
archway into errant orchards—
he augurs “ought,” a bitterness and a beginning.

Argument at 3 A.M.

If
you
live in
the city
you either embrace
noise and the nearness of others
or you’ll go mad insisting on your right to silence

which
is
nowhere,
for even
in the wilderness
one must accept the crisp breaking
of a branch, the nighttime chirping of crickets, the birds.

And
is
it not
a strange but
precious gift to hear
two stoned teens in the street below,
her telling him, you can fuck me if you kiss my toes?

Point of View

A
bald
man in
an over-
sized army jacket
settles upon the scarred surface
of a bench in the park, then sinks slowly into sleep.

A
tall
boy with
tangled hair
bends before the man,
tweaks the lens of his thirty-five
millimeter, steps in once more, is about to shoot

when
he
and the
man are caught—
quickly—by the frame
of another man’s camera
for the “Living” section of the local newspaper.

Sodomy

The
law
is clear:
in certain
states of our union
certain acts performed by certain
people may disrupt the social and moral order

of
things
as a
certain god
of a certain creed
intended and are thus certain
to offend certain quantities of people who are

in
their
beliefs
certain that
any infraction
of the written law, whatever
it may be, must be, in no uncertain terms, sentenced.

Misquoted

In
that
feature
on me in
(Photo)Graphic Edge
they say I said I used to take
my little girl with me to a studio in Queens

and
let
her crawl
on the floor
with all the razors
and here and there a few fat rats
while I assembled collages with goat’s blood and glue

but
the
truth is
I don’t use
glue in collages
and no self-respecting artist
would rent a studio anywhere but Manhattan.

Urban Folktale

A
guy
I know
has a friend
whose little brother
had this unbearable migraine
no over- or behind-the-counter drug could relieve

so
he
suffered
until some
doctor discovered
traces of fetal flesh and bone
in his forehead, which, when removed, were identified

as
the
remains
of a twin
he ate in the womb
which explained why he often felt
lonely, incomplete, and hungry for companionship.

Eve
erred
and ate
ejection,
evaded edict
enigmatically emphatic,
enticed as she was by effulgent efflorescence

and
the
ardor
of adder
who ended ennui,
emancipating to ensnare.
Egregious egress! Erst in Eden-ease exalted,

now
the
emblem
of effect
emended only
through exodus. No either/or,
nor if/except: enter earth and its entanglements.

Character

In
a
Chinese
pictograph
the word And looks like
a hand with three outstretched fingers
grasping at space, ready to seek or accept what is

there
with-
in reach
or beyond
reach though still subject
like the soft gold of a small bird
to our admiration, like the stars to our yearning

but
the
Chinese
pictograph
for Cease is a foot’s
firm imprint in the sand, as if,
after all the wishing and searching, one stops to rest.

[All excerpts were prevously published in Radiant Losses, New Sins Press, 2010.]