From the Fishouse

Dissociation is an attempt to manage
the experience of being abused.
--The Survivor’s Guide To Sex

Those heads floating away on
the end of a balloon string?
That is it also. And the

way I fall to looking like
a blank faced stone cat while you
fluff me like a pillow. You

wonder at those women found
elegantly crashed into
treetrunks and cut up beds? We

thread through this cocked up fabric,
isolated orbs clipping
around you. Tender full lipped

mines in this glass meadowed land.
(To tell the truth? I cannot
drive over bridges, my hands,

they steam with my urges
to fly). It is the droppings
of things… Lashes. Heartbeats.

The slippings of butter knives
into sad skin. The muffled
comings of me to your door

again. I become two. One
under you and the flying
of One above us. Can’t you

feel me watching? The knocking
of your body rarely gets
answered and you cannot stop.

(Or you just don’t). It’s the porn
below a bed. The plunge of
hand through windowpane and cheek.

A slippery wrist with ginger
fingers. It is the ease with
which I read this from a stage.