Lovers

Only intimates join in this dance

of planned takings and calculated ends,

blue eyes meeting brown dawn upon day

upon dusk, hooves plodding plotted ruts,

hairless hands pulling, striking, restraining,

raping flesh proclaimed friend,

giver of life. We are intimates, we say,

human and not, like white-skinned richies

love black-skinned maids.

Family members, we say.

Intimates dancing in our hall,

to our tune, under our knives,

shot with our guns, gnashed

between our blunted teeth.

We love the cows like we love our women:

fucked and used and ground up

in the machinery of our love.

Working the Mirror

She knows how to work a mirror,

reverses images, modulates tones,

not caught out by random reflections

in windows or septic puddles.

Mimickry is a two-lensed telescope,

she says, a broad capture

and a rarified painting both:

She standing at the fulcrum,

she with her monitors and corrections

and temperings,

she with her polite gloss and roiling

belly. Her skin breaks sometimes,

red pus staining white skin

and whiter cotton, goblins crawling

along sinks and dressers, oozing

up the mirrors, eating the clarity

of her eyes. They don't know,

those with the photograph

memories, stamped and dated

at first impressions, but she does.

She takes time alone,

washes clothing, stitches

seven layers of flesh,

waits for scabs to form

until the only thing left

imprinted on her retina

agrees with what they think

they know.