Gene TANTA

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Comrades,

I was tipped off by the barber.

Your blood approaches my home on cloven toes

softly, softly as if

to offer up the hot intestines of a stomach,

on a silver platter of polished curses,

for mine.

 

It was night and the rain had stopped.




The Blade’s Confession

 

Outside, the clouds have gathered near the doorway

to smoke and say nothing.

Now they have come inside, hung up their hats,

and are prepared to speak.

 

Don’t you hear them?

Black pebbles race down their rusty faces—

making the noises of satisfaction

—those curvy,

luscious basement sounds that gurgle up for light.

 

We’ll cut their throats and name them later.




To the Skies, Mortals

 

Hi, I am a rabid carcass impeding highway traffic

asking you to stick your finger in my heart

to cool and sizzle there into exhaust smoke and meat.

 

You must always approach me handle-side

because my pain is a sing-song pain

for all the sky to witness and echo brightly.

 

When in halves, dark from the butt to the tip,

as if coming up where and when I called for you

hoarse and tired, what’s your name?




Love is a Four-letter Word

So, there’s like this too-tally hot guy at my school, right, and he has this amazingly distended syntax that reaches out to here and last night he came over to my bedroom through the chaste little window over the garage, right where my parents park their religion but on his way up the scaffolding he like too-tally hiked his shins and pine nuts on the neighbor’s prosaic branches, but once up, all bloodied and plucked, he knocked over the heaviest, the thickest potted plants off my shelve as he wielded his engorged language structure.



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