Surgery addict

poems

jay Snodgrass

Hysterical books Tallahassee Florida

Judas Priest .5Psycho Color .7Hookworm .9

Finger Puppets .11

surgery addict .13

judgment of the furies .15

jelly fish .17

down the drain .19

Oedipus satan .21transfusion .23

Judas Priest

The clear blue invites me to confess

it breaks my skull with its camp-officer’s baton.

When I think of you I’m filled with opposition,

airy thoughts thick as the cream on my brain

seeping through my eyes like rain through path stones.

The popular media makes me a holy man, but to Fashion I’m just another baton-worthy apparition.

I’m afraid to walk between strangers. My fear is the colorof enraged billboards.

It’s cold here, the color of gas station attendant’s uniforms.

5

Psycho Color

The church eats my dog sends me a bill for tearsand indigestion.

Tread gently this carpet of saint’s hairwhich burns when you walkupon it, or when you lie your confessionto its golden strands.

These clouds are holy sky writing or great loops of sky intestine draped over the high-rises like angel hairpasta, vaporous noodles in the holy vomit of God’s own Alfredo.

Say you are sorry. Speak into the microphoneof retribution. Those detonations are improvised from my roadside attitude, inflated sequence of holy fire.

7

Hookworm

Through the leg of lovetime bends oblique severing conventions, dogs and children arguing driving the curve of a cello until it is ancient and universal.

Petrarch, Threenoses

Your hand no longer a hookworm I watched you fall from the palm tree framed by a condo the exact shape of a medical dictionary. What made it strange was the sunset through palm fronds, surgical and foreign.

As an adult now you sleep on benchesand mimic the wail of subway cars. Sometimes you sprinkle bleached flourso no one can approach withoutleaving footprints. I think

the wind was the tree’s doctorwho shook you from its intestines before you could take hold of her beautiful coconuts.

9

Finger Puppets

Against the reading light you flapthe shining insect wings of your hands.

I take extra plates down from the cupboard, am caressed by feelers.

Everyone’s fetish hoards a tingle.

For instance, the way wax melts white and pink on the crescent

of your stomach.

Where do your bones keep their skin when you sleep? in the drawer, with the shaving knives?

In the restaurant of my mind, no eats as much as you.

When the farm was razedall the animals stood up and saluted.

11

Surgery Addict

See here, this is how you know the value of stitching,

how failure is shaved, the thin hairs collected in a beaker of gold.

The lab tech warns you your country needs you to fail.

the woven traffic of your intestines. measure your debt

divided by the number of surgeries provided, then

subtract your eyes, replacethem with light meters.

insurance will provide the walrus tusk to be affixed to the noseof your space ship.

See? things are looking up.Once you’re all closed upit isn’t failing anymore.

13

Judgment of the Furies

We inherited grace, middle school and needle light. Recall how we weregasoline weaned

for mercy’s sake because mercy delightsin her electrical lights (bitch)

meanwhile sparks on the horizon

prelude the whip of dawn, her magnetic blossom, cleave-

age beneath the meteor gown.

You men who worship at our temple we can see you are in full endowment.

We open our gates to the penetrating crowd, faces in delight.

15

Jelly Fish

here is a jar at the grocery store marked jelly here is another marked fish

take them both to the bread isle and throw them as high as you can

so that they smash together at the vector of marble rye and discount white bread

run as fast as you can, arms outspread, and dive chest out onto the shards of glass

stinging capsules and tentacles, there is nothing more deadly in all the sea

17

Down the Drain

The drain is a circle of eyesblinking back the remnantsof our shame.

I am pierced in rowsby scientific fetish.

I welt up with an allergic bulging that indicates the more illusive,

more turgid effectsof your body.

Scapula and curve, hairs in place of breath,

cleaned behind the foaming. It slips away.

I am cracked open, desiccated for you

through sky.

19

Oedipus Satan

Momma is relaxing in her favorite sledge of granite. Practicing for the grave is what the papers say.

Memento Mori for the service of criminal organizations she wrought.That, and the shade of expectations, everything elsewe’ve put to rest in the doomed arcade.

I’m affirmed without help or fear of the present

which describes the line of a miteredprefab sarcophagus which is the unspoken word for whoever is taking the notes.

21

Transfusion

I give you absent fingers to probe ingratitude and bitterness.

Little sausage casements of precious things,

lacquered, like the dark metal of the inquisitive, with shame. Amateurs!

You resemble the returned product in your defect of want. It touches the barrenness of desire’s wood shop.

That is all! Rejoice.

23

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