poem || Jane Joritz-Nakagawa

diurnal

(and) where is my mouth
the day you became
part of my skin
a whole fragment

needy telephone eyes
smile in the dark
sing! sweet chariot
of deceased dreaming shadows

pointing towards zero
fluted/carbonated metaphors
erase the chimes of regret
of dying flowerbeds

slender and heavy
cheap scenes for a
showcase of distractions
in a succession of coarseness

shoulder of afterthought
shivering impediment
sleeve of abandonment
dismembers the landscape

silhouette gown
stitched in space
choreographed my childhood
while averting my tongue

purging the sublime
blur or whatever
buffet of disease
sorts the garbage

distorting roadways
wor(l)d stuck in my gut
i must continually throw up the
see-through daffodils

which years remain possible
inexplicable placards
tossed roughly inside
a fabulist ambulance

dry vegetative pleasures
in the rot of language
injure the meridian
where i was born

lonelier than solitude
against a blue background
swallowing the whole sky
the emptier the heavier

barren wor(l)dless life
planets turn
on invisible axes
how drifting the addenda

extremely aware of women
trajectories of bleak pull
pale pall bearer of meaning
small issues of foam

womb crawling towards
a demonic mother
these clothes leave bruises
sky a pink furnace

bird's furniture wires
my eyes maybe on backwards
i'd like it up the ass
another dismissal

scent of the dead
in the public of poetry
raping me blind
forgetting sparse oceans

shiny stupor
sorry descendants
in lackluster fields
moldy hospitals for souls

questionable bridges between worlds
knifelike inward gaze
damaged collages
on the edge of reason

cottages of collapse
everything in abundance
except kindness in shaky buildings
frontier of nakedness

barrier of doorsteps
cowgirls with misshapen tails
a fine mist becomes despair
in cautionary hypotheses

panic of thoughtless trees
syphilis of concrete
lurks inside every
theory of you

forest of murder
the merrier the more
a horrid birthright
threatens language as representation

to translate the clouds
above ugly buildings
just making conservation
of stealth decoration

books on my body
strange amounts of granite
gradual shading
is nobody's theory

sifting seasons and plastic creatures
plummeting consciousness
epitomes of crowd control
in external bodies

bullets in shopping malls
forever revolving
endless stars
become self-portraits

flowering gatherings
on the inside of the universe
days of death
sprout hymns of love

infinite people
adore silent remains
guidepost to midnight
petal of larceny

devouring itself
a balancing of lines
the place where once was
forces and nothing

unfinished sketch
duplications of goddesses
in case of earthquakes
black ivory some green

ambivalent critique
lost on a mountain
the necessity of the unnecessary
conversation among trees

traveling to change
what one's eyes see
sprouting from my head
framed by a non-existent sky

hand in a lake
nest in my hair
admission to life
corner pleasant with woman in it

digging for rats
flowers don't bloom
stations which are no more
earthen floors

chemistry folklore
extravagant plain
nothingness of suburbia
my self a mirage

tower of textures
eat human souls
during magnetic storms
for a hex of language