I WANT TO STOP THINKING ABOUT YOU WHEN I MASTURBATE
I am drunk enough to see fat
versions of myself in other girls tumbling
out of your apartment complex & grocery store; I am sad enough
to move with the exactness of blocking, with fear
of not hitting my light, of not furnishing
my lines: slow, precise—I calculate
each movement in relation to its kinetic & caloric value—:
it should sound like I’m not wearing mascara or
like I’m wearing too much mascara. I entertain
two glasses of water to embarrass myself
in front of myself—try to explain: won’t have to
ask again later. Head down, I am recruited
by plazas dead-humming with the metallic thrashings of a flagpole—
the way other-room fucking reverberates
on television & frames on-screen-reflections. I want you to leave
to smoke cigarettes, but you don’t leave or smoke enough cigarettes:
I twist your shoes in coca-cola & you stick
to linoleum & similar genres of floor: the way hair envelopes
a spoon, strands orbiting an undry head.
PROPOSED EVOLUTION FOR FOREPLAY
[a] You make my body too wet to apply sunscreen,
milks off & black-dews eyelashes—grow scales
where I steam & burn like a dragon lady—: color & itch
of wearing kotex for two days. In the oven blacken
grapefruit, ice pick open, exfoliate under each scale
for the hair-screened drain.
[b] I recommend we meet in a hookah bar & read
fungus as it curries root in our right lung:—you eat
lipstick to red our pink squid insides.
[c] Yes—I’ve heard evolutionary theories of cocks
mushrooming open inside to anchor
out the cum of other cocks—: to mark me
follow these suggestions:
draw an X, from temples to my curves
of chin, with whatever is handy (george-foreman-grease,
clove honey, bird shit before it whites, etc.) as long as it fills
empty scale-cavities & butter-melts.
[d] Saucepans gum your gathered supplies, leave
the burner gassing, avalanche them out slow
on the floor to cool before marking. We wait—:
index leaves in my pocket & throw a chair
across the room as if I’ve been autumning
with someone else—collapses in perfect equilateral sections,
each a cantaloupe seed neglecting its pulp string umbilical.
HOW TO ROLL YOUR TONGUE BACK TO SWALLOW IT
A man with no face will be on screen evolving
his alone time—desire a purer muteness & demand
the studio audience rotten-tomato
the stage: start envelope licking
from the inside, steal yourself in, be certain
friends misinterpret postcards from accidenting
on a moon fleshy with 19 kilometers of ice—
underneath (they say) oceans warm
from the orbit’s solitary distaste for Jupiter. Adapt:
crease your body, keep folding, search out
coasters and shag carpet to fill your dead star,
husk fat off to repurpose vertebrae:
you’ll need shelving. You won’t be fit
for a bed (nor will you be drowsy)—
fearing conversation and petrichor,
chew your skin for umbrella stands.
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Lucia LoTempio is a poet currently studying literature at SUNY Geneseo. Her work has been previously featured in Gandy Dancer. She hails from Buffalo, NY.
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