Moths About the Body ------------------------------------------------------
Choose A Poem To Read:
Moths
About the Body
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Moths (Copyright Amber Tamblyn 2001)
I consider myself flexible in awkward positions.
Not a home wrecker,
but I do knock.
And you and I are pals.
The kind that
open up to each other but keep mouths
at a safe distance.
But I cannot amend all tongues.
I walk the dubious centerfold of your eye-line, friend.
I carry my purse on the same side you walk next to me
to avoid hand.
To avoid saying anything small.
We are the shredded fuse,
the rebound wires commencing,
badly rerouted and iniquitous.
We are the failed test of the emergency buddy system.
Chums.
I am a derelict without furniture or life signs,
painting your posture from distance that
can fit inside the palm of your land.
Though we share ice cream instead of pipedreams,
I know
you'd never be lover to another poet
because you are one.
And the fear of being served a reflection
in the way that you have served some,
is a glass house you are not ready to escape from.
I'll keep liking mint, while you go for chocolate.
Conundrums
I can't seem to get away from.
You are just another sheep
jumping the fence in my nightmares.
Counting out numerical complacency,
a platonic answer with a nod-off.
Like a million hairs you've grown near your mouth
plowed down, rough and sore
my beard too wants to be a little fucked and worn, but
the time is not now, if not never.
Not before, during or after
her, your lover, another, or the next chapter.
So lets just say
lets just stay
friends, forever.
There is no title for our book cover-up,
so I will keep reading like a brood kept laboring.
Take a long walk off my short feet,
my stomach pleads hunger no matter
how much I eat
and its open mouth aches.
Where there should be butterflies there are moths.
Eating through my loins like loincloth.
If there's a map to things spoken, friend
we'll see we are way off.
Buddies.
You're the worst kind because
you wont even reject me physically,
we can't even celebrate celibacy.
I am your dirty washboard
and yet have never had you inside me.
There's no declaration in our country.
Pals.
You tug the one red string
that seems to run through everything.
I seek your flying patterns from behind,
the blue leading the blind.
Friends. No beneficiary.
So we stay.
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About the Body © Amber Tamblyn
In the shower,
her body dies like a spider’s.
The blooming flower
seeds a cemetery.
A pill lodges in the inner pocket of her flesh coat.
Her breasts were the gifts of ghosts.
Dark tarps of success.
Her mouth dribbles over
onto the bathroom floor.
Pollock blood.
The body is removed off the red carpet,
put in a black bag,
taken to the Mother’s screams
for identification.
The Country says good things
about the body.
They print the best photos;
the least bones, the most peach.
Candles are lit in the glint
of every glam. Every magazine stand
does the Southern Belle curtsy
in her post-box office bomb honor.
The autopsy finds an easy answer.
They say good things about the body.
How bold her eyes were, bigger than Hepburn’s.
The way she could turn into her camera close-up
like life depended on her.