Body Nostalgic

From the Beginning

I hung on your doorframelike a hinge,and wore the white dressbecause I thoughtyou would remembermy body without organs,haunting a frontal lobe.I must have lost my mind.Renegadebrains on leashesflying faster away,which must be whywe love abandoned,frantic things,and panic whena temporal node forgetsthe sensation ofof a beating, deserted coreor a door being closedbehind you.

THEORY

your stomach is tied in knots is a gallbladder lecturing the stomach on political correctness and timing

I should not have been so naïve as to think an oral cavity could learn tactics or omissions.

Other

When he let my name vibrate a larynxI did not recognize the sound of it as my own,but instead, what you would call the assemblage of organswrapped, strangling that central throbbing instrument.There is not a word that means:I did not think my heart could cavefor another body’s epidermis

Etymology

If only I could lose feeling in my limbsso I might fight the urge to stagger towards youor find the right muscles to tweakin order for these spasms of contrition to stop.

In my dream I kept shoutingLo siento! Mira, lo sientoand when you turned to face me:you’re pronouncing it wrong

THEORY

to say an oral cavity is the same as any other flytrap or hatch—you would have known the difference

if: you look like a codfish. I would have answered,is there any other shape my mouth should make than to state ‘yes, yes darling, what is it that you want?’

Haunting

The dead skin cells that cling on windowpanesare testaments. Prints are proof of a ghost.They reminisce,they whisper to forfeited bodies,they reattach to phantom limbs.If disappearing were a sort of crimea body would not have smearedevidence on the glassbefore carrying your organs away.

Arrhythmia

For a pounding organ to caper a beatit must have first forgotten the basicsor has counted the rest too longThe heart of the matter:silences where the beat should be.In the dark cavity the cardiac muscle burns,it murmurs an apology for getting it all wrongor for burglaring the careful composition.The presence of a thing, a sound, is necessary to surviveor only reassurance that it is not gone,which is the same.

THEORY

having a lump in your throat is the same as your arteries are swelling the organs up into an oral cavity

I made sure to tell you his name in a breath that could sound familiar so that I might hear your gasps as forgiveness.

Cadavers

I kissed the frecklebeside your right eye,but on his body.I had wanted thisto be a redeeming act.My heart, caught on a tongue,rouges a cheek.I must have thought I wasan empty bottle of wine,to be filledwith somethingthat would warm my peel,or to forget my insides.But when he lickedthe sherry residuefrom my gums, I was worriedhe would feel my aortic valvebehind my teeth,pulsing with your name.

Counterfeit

Black trash bagselastic heart strings — tug, tugOrgan of hearing — equilibriumAn external ear collects sound wavesvibrates a cochlear ductyou can’t just throw me away!I am broken stuffed birds you tore and forgotleaning on the iron fence outside our apartmentFix me with thumbtack and cold staplesor your saliva.The creak of an oak door being closedand the sound of you leavingvibrates the same tissue.I’m not some used up thing!not any more than my organs have been spent.

THEORY

you finally caught your breath when your lungs reeled the exhaust back and are now scheduled for maintenance.

I had hoped you would stay long enough for me to hear your gasping over the surge of blood in my ears, practicing the sound of rivers swelling.

Heart Attack

An arm spasm, a lung twitchthe heartstring that extends under fingernailstangle with nerve endings and are cauterized, searing.Pain claps to the underside of an epidermisand twists into an egg white cage. A breath is pulled downand down like tugging on a ball of yarn, to be tangledwith chords struck and vibrating on an upbeatknots tied tight in an upper torsomutiny the beating thing.

THEORY

blood cells always surge out in hoards. We are releasing armies.It is their absence that kills us, not the other thing.

My stomach fluttered when you rested your hands over by belly and promised the next time we would save it.

In Spring

it is okay to saymy drum organhas forgotten rhythmbecause the tulipsonly grow to the soundof kazoosand magnolias only likethe brass soundof your lungsand because Manhattanwould had disposedof it soon enough anywayif the parkwere not constantlydancing to the noiseof that incessant salesmanpounding away.

Panic Attack

Pink elastic flesh stretched forward and back – a gaspThe lungs heave calamity breath, in always in,choked – last again in the knowingFingertips extended, a palm panics the stingconfrontational life line – line drawn tightacross the soft stretch of a cheek.Mouth canal, pearls root downsawing, thrashing into a tonguesliced – terrified of the unraveling

THEORY

if you have butterflies it is the same as having your guts fumble for the right response

To offer you my vocabulary is not the same as my organs, in piles, glittering in my hands.

Raid

I let him feel around my innardsbecause I knew I deserved the intrusion.I begged him to grope my entrailsand discover that my gutswere slick and warm and useful.if this is all I am,I did not want you to be the surgeon who found me out.

Je Suis Désolée

I kiss the mouth of the first bottlethat promises to aquarium the room.Beer-ballooned guts guffaw how they used to besome young stud: angsty-angeled youthswho spray their faith on the ramps of skateboard parkspoliced by daylight.

to sedate and slow an impulse,a brain drags to retrieve the notion of omit.

I think of the half pipe – jumble of kamikaze jumps.Teenagers are proving authority is the flip and quarter turn,and after: two liberal-arts-lovers hold hands on the bendlaughing about her first French words and a kiss.

a liver bucks a temporal lobeand is nostalgic for a heart.

Any other set of lips is just a second opinionand besides, a body cannot fathom an empty bottle.

THEORY

you were never as offended as I hoped you would be that my body only functions the way it should.

Apologia

This is all we areBody of organs – emptyintent eviscerated atop cold metalstages Look! I must have torn open my fabric to show youstuffing Rib cage Ripped apart – openSee my innards glisten:Pink fleshy liver, alcohol perfumed.My ear organ, throbbingglobe of a heart – did I hear you saystone? Lungs pitch slowlyout – you’ve seen the sigh, that porous breathand the poundingdid you think I would tick?That my heartwould be the Triumphal March? or I would hinge with you?Of course we come to findeven under etherized breath we do not stumble over the grand apology:We are sorryI am so sorryThis is all I am.