Kendall Grady

If someone is captive,

you can tell them

any story you want.

If you are captive,

I will tell you the story

in which you love me

and it will be true.

One stillpoint,

one red apple pierced

by the string of a harp.

I know what good mythology is.

Venetian blinds sound super

sexy but they’re really not.

A cockroach inside out

on the carport.

Bludgeon out the eyes

and the sockets behind

the eyes a modern postcard,

so afraid of a fifth column

in case of war, the turgor

of abdomens set

into each other like pots.

The body as a site of inscription, duh.

I feel you up for holes, try to bundle

you, a pixel of hay at the feet of Mario Kart,

but you'd rather be a rambling man

o' war, a city of strangers in which I am also estranged.

The salt of the earth is a conducting crystal,

but the salt of the sea just stings.

How is it jellyfish don't destroy

each other? Love is the dumb banging

of pots and pans, the trill of every beetle

humping dirt, a long shot

from the broiler through the heart. When I kissed you

Happy New Year you didn't kiss back.

I wanted to kill you with my mouth,

but the sigh in sign is silent, deadly.

A headless goat and 3 chickens

washed up behind a South Beach condominium.

By February, the weather was perfect.

Superfun you're my emergency

contact, our murder-suicide

always a broken pact

or penumbral

dialectic. Never use

the lyric out of service

to the self. I want to hang

up/out but I'm having trouble

locating the smell of cat urine.

How can I squat your bodily

function. Your position relative

to gravity. Your aging process

already meat. Who did you think's

on the cell? Meat sounds.

What did you gchat?

The sound of meat.

On the real, sometimes I hate

my body so much, I have to say it

out loud, but not always you

over me. Sometimes I'm on top

and it's like everything

that goes up must come.

"There is no sexual symbolism

and sexuality does not designate

another 'economy,' another 'politics,'

but rather the libidinal unconscious

of political economy as such."

This sentence has been carried out

and you deserved to die

in this lavish absence apart,

a party, you were my greatest

hit ungh and I took it

like a man, all the way

to the bank.

Showing up to the club like, oh no

there's people here

Not waving but drowning

What is this being-against

when we could be together?

Birds do it. Bees do it.

Pythons do it like rabbits.

What is this ethico-aesthetic

paradigm, group selfie?

Just tell me

how u rly feel. No phones

no phonies. Showing up to the club

like flies contour dung.

Remember, love

needs a body. You are my creator

but I am your master. Obey!

The ignorant joy of swimming

up to the burl

of a polar bear, I mean pool bar,

because art

is a totality. The way you move

your body in the gulls,

in the cyphers, in light

of the hair of the dog

how much water treatment

until vomit. How much Trident

until polearm. The sea as pointed

witness. A good friend

jokes, I don't celebrate

Cinco de Mayo because I'm not white.

Moving like a sick spine of cars

across the causeway has great effect

on our relationship. Things

come on, get set

like boiled eggs. I'm screaming

about the state

of the bird of paradise, like,

how hard is it to remember water?!

If then, so what. The causeway up

I feel blessed. It's our first porn,

soft as limestone, edible knifefish

broke open on the skeletal miles

from a canal, a remediation

of legal death. I have no will

or digital executor.

I'm still vibing from killing it

on the dance floor

and we can fight all we want

if it makes us money. I want

to be money with you.

We mime our goodbye behind the gray troll

of a gas pump. Two roads diverge, etc.

The killer under my car is a patient trundle

keeping me at bay in your mouth. I tread water

in deliberate Ws like kissing toast.

We have to try hard

as cat-lovers taming the internet

for lack of dog parks. We have to perform

a museum in which we're every cursor

hovering halo. We have to behave like glue

inside horses. We have to grow their kelp

of black tongues

to wreath us throat to asshole.

We have to gut each other

and sleep inside our corpses

for warmth. O! what excuse

will my poor devil have then to wait, sniffing

asphalt? I will spur a new race of holodeck

desire, love summoned with love, instant

gratification. I always knew I was an alien.

Every time I get a boner

I can hear it phoning home.