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Poems

Status Report on Slinky Lust

By Thylias Moss From Issue No. 3

+  Though I don’t see all of them, or any of them, those who need to kill look at me earnestly, and one particularizes his need as I walk toward Dream Baby Tienda where stacks of newspapers by the entrance, bundled and wet with pre-dawn rain, are legless versions of tables at Red’s Dot’s, a bistro a block away, recently reopened under new management – I have a date – I have everything that I have at a time when more and more is becoming acceptable, and mostly that helps, but I am also in this predicament of being out here to meet my killer, on purpose and not on purpose, though since I was prepubescent I’ve been advised not to walk with rolling buttocks as if I needed to exercise a slinky inside glutei becoming more of what a man might reach for, to move that slinky too, on and off the dance-floor, it can double as a killing-floor, the ad was right, everyone wants a slinky, but I go ahead and along with my butt, put my heart in it, my arms, everything I’ve got as if I’m a spy who has to be all focus, all conviction, all business, whose work could well involve assassination for the sake of democracy, for the longevity of the free world, my killer’s freedom to express himself, his artistic use of a knife, like another finger, like a modification of the finger bone, bone that makes his hard-on hard, stainless, the tip as hot as a glassblower’s tools and breath, after my death, my artisan killer makes for me, or hires a less-eager hand, one more accustomed to satisfaction and success, in and out, round about, so is steadier, but no, my killer’s more likely a do-it-himself guy, I hope so, who by himself makes me a glass ball gown, I can’t help it, I loved Cinderella, and when I’m being killed, she is still my way out, she found magic in her servitude, the fairy godmother would not have come had there been no abuse, he works quickly, my body is found in it – I am corseted with a window – I am suspended in a crystal bell, the clapper, clap on, clap off, everyone wants a clapper-flapper-wrapper white for purtity of the morgue, chapel dapper morgue-white mortgage, seems I swing at a beautiful gallows, a stamen of a flower gloved in ice, so brittle, some people died during the ice storm, the power lines looped so low you could step over them, but you didn’t come out of the glass house, when I grabbed for his lapel, I thaw in the warmth of fingers, colder than most fingers, but warmer than ice – I am not the same – and that was his idea, to him goes the credit, it really will, I must get there first, to the moment of murder, and he must be in a position to see that I have arrived, in Bremen, trip for two, smooth jazz station prize, an exhibition: Wie wohnen (How to Live), until 3 April, and then it’s over, a question with a subtitle: “Of lust and the agony of making the right choice1” – the blade of his knife quivers like a tuning fork as I come near – his whole head vibrates – resonance, fundamentals of attraction, he stood in line all day to ride roller coasters all day, the vibration speaks it, the slight quiver I thought was fluctuation in heartbeat is more, identification, heartthrob, my wobble, my defect, I am able to understand it, bilingual, language of killer and victim mesh, our cold, cold dovetails, lovebird tails, we love birds, common alphabet, the lust and the agony, stuff is locked up in intimacy that can’t get out=

 

 

1. Exhibition: “Wie wohnen” in Bremen: Wie wohnen” (How to Live) is the question asked by the Wilhelm Wagenfeld Stiftung until April 3, 2005. The exhibition has the subtitle “Of lust and the agony of making the right choice.” [http://en.red-dot.org/1129.html]

About Thylias Moss More From Issue No. 3