XENOMORPHIA

8/9/2019 XENOMORPHIA

1/25

Wheelhouse

Press 2009


2/25

Excerpts ofXenomorphiahave appeared in ditch, poetry, and Octaves. Thankyou to the editors.

Matina Stamatakis &John Moore Williams


3/25

zoom in

amputees embrace amidst (slagheap city bared rebar of buildings twisted into nervetrees) abattle between cannibals (rough singing of limbgrind twisting, interweaved, growing in blackblood pool)

cast for broken bones (the slagheapshudders, distant heartmurmur of steelbeastsgrowling passage),

dictionary of tongues (dreams)escape into that (darkmatterbody, wombs of stars whispering the curve)esh everyone has worn (outerworn, splitting, at ngertips softly bladed insistence)

gaping wound of mouths (shadowcavern awrithe with light)hiss between rosaries of teeth (distanceglimmer)

instinct of torsos (sing an ice-age-ending heat)

just a (gloss on the endless fritterings of idle hands)key to bodies without locks, such a (eye-rhyme of hollows)

lonely way to live (an eaten imminence of the remembered)

morsel, sticky-sweet (recombinantnecks nape, where we hide kisses genuectionsorange, round and pored of intimacy)

patient (inmates of a decimated land-question asked in touch and haste (scape)

a rage of (neatlya silence (expounded

ticket to a run-down carnival whereurgency of ngersviolence of hipswound an air shaped likexylophones quiet harmonics

yearning toward yourself, azoo full of domesticated beasts

Zoon-id

womb shadows eaten raw, bodies without bodies without(discomture, genuect) theseglassy bowsof silhouette these eyes

of wonderment


4/25

born of remembered kisses, lips and ligatures hasteglossied and amber-toned iodine

how our wounds could mingle with each graze

how robotic the tongue thrusts toward itselfin a mad dash for loveless poison

morsels of bitten fur we hide ourselves in,

idle carnivores domesticated --

bored intimacy, times caught in rawnude body curves splitting into haploidalsynagogues

we pray to touch, darkened matterlimb nerve harmonics sculpted

into

(into eye remembered still-beatslash sickly-sweet beasts of sex/violence((hide the strophes of 3 elongated sighs

((hide the way we feel like city beggarsstreet urchinsneatly stretched acrossa desecrated divideI

remember loneliness was conch to pillow((taking in ocean one breath at a time

taking inthe gentle murmur of softly bladed lightsas they played across our brows

as ngers

intimate, stretchedformed pillarsformed (out of)

harmonics of lonely zoos((architectonicthe hills of our elbowscrooked withdisentanglement


5/25

Zeno mapped such distances as hands (lips impossible of remembrancetill touch becomes them) your hips a hollow cradle where Ill remember

sojourn such glacial silences (that genesis got it wrong, where Ill comewith lolling tongue

your mouth nds awkward as a ball gag, a (to mumble the unname of a godsavage and erudite prostrate and pantingin the bind

of ligaments and lost love letters

xenomorph thought alone the hillsechoed of a soft and pungent lightwicked with musk the bodies thousand mouths drooled

in the withered and breath-rumpled seawears three sheets windbeaten comfortably, tracing a hackneyed divisionviolently marching the alluvial roads of the nerves

(to) mapless tread (where monsters be)

and a seraphic longing tolls out the porticoesof banks and stock exchangesand fails to pay the rent

comfortably, tracing a hackneyed division the seven hills all asses and elbowswhere we walked to witness forgotten bridal rites,a coin in the lapdrumming the skirts knee-stretched skin of fabric

violently marching the alluvial roads of the nervesululating frequencies, as the uvulatenant of a recombinant spectrum

secretes a words liquidity to deconstructthe hallowed menisci

Rorschach nds in an elided thought leaked to formas accidental as a fetus) will we retain the right to hide?

Toourache to burst?

Quiet. you lie side by side like twin peeled fruits.

will your tongue lend minelips, then wander out to bear witnessto the rustling of night-creatures

in the broad green tongues of two oclocki cant sleep just yet. parole,long within its silence,your hopeful convulsions round out the mouths

of hungry generations, wide and yawningwith light, an empire dead and unwrittensleeps here in the erythrocyte-lit obscurity of your hips.


6/25

let me hone yours with sandpaper

oblivious oceans as stolid as

nouns cells bared raw and swollena minimalist insistenceleafed-through, you jungles of a soft and pungent light,whose teeming with alternate

iterations of otherwisehomolinguistic redactions, renderedglossolalia by the familiar that renders theforeign aneffusive, if opaque and endlessly regressing,

dnouement

cable your ngers pier stretched into

into needles to form

nerves delicate crochetballast your belly to sinkme in spite

recorded historiesalphabetize and inventory

the things I would, as you,say to me.

To hear them speak of it is to know that there is a distant poem, spoken in a foreign tongue, of which you are able

to receive only the dimmest echoes, the voluptuous curve of a vowel, a consonants starkly forthright angularity, butthat it is the very foundation of your own tongue.

In a white hall: clenching silk worms, milk dewonce outside fall tapestries part ash-veils,crackling ambers

Spring does the samesynchronous shiver

between window sepia--

dust the same parched tone

synchronicity, rejuvenating save for feebleVidalia onions in lip-locked mason jarsuntil the mantle is bulked with dry pantry fruits,mustard seeds--these vowels go on gasping.

I want to undo you like a shaken apple,

with hand reaching to dust the betweens.Leave your disheveled seeds

inside the fall spice ambrosia


7/25

until vacancy demands itselfa burst capsule of onces...

leave your vagueness inside my tongueI want to save it, salivate with its porcupine/quill slivers

until more familiartastes emerge, puzzles snap intoplace, until our one ambiguous beingis replaced with solidity--the whitesof our clenched ngers milk dew,

their home behind innitesimalshutters.

No one will see us clawing for the siren gramophone--our tempered drones are not pillars

even if we build ourselves up toreplicate statues--

we will hide inside the oubliettes of our ears,bodies pressed between bodies pressedbetween weather-whipped and frail whispers;dimmest bespoken opals.

You, star,

Excreta, you,Crystal, resonance,

Shiver, you, the right word.

This words intimacyOf forgotten booksOn dusty shelvesOf infrequent libraries.

You, ridden,Of ora, chevalier,

You, passioned, adherent,

Dust, increate, glimpsed, youLike words discerned throughThe other sides of canonically

Thin pages, in the yblownLight of eggshell, bulb


8/25

Abode, colonized,of maggots, amniotic,you, corrugated,tau(gh)t

countless, menisci,

you, pulp, graphite, oil. Youdark, matter,

youoyi.this too

eradicable gulf.


9/25

Lyric--primitive symbols, tendersymbols we stretch

[drama of literature and romance]teeth & nails--frost breath

of antique Isabels tonguedishevel, slow night

despondingly incense-laced [the slow,

descending degrees have done littleto coax poplar into hypothermia]

mossy earth mufed, still,fruitage reaped mature

autumn cheek--lip blazes voice blazes

thorny pleasuresyou:

cloistral bee-hive, quiet nestyou, alarm & malfunction

nothingness, unmeekphantomesque

on sea salt clawing

eye-balls

may never love symbolsor wanted wings, or sentimental

gures on a shell, urn

---poesy, how it temptsvision as an idle nymph

how it pulp and tauteyes love more than

ambition

love more than forgettingsweat music, hypnosis

woman lounges expressionless[ Venus ] waiting

for the explosion of bees

our eyes meet over the slaughterarticulate (what? the echoed huskhas uttered) of never


10/25

the muskof memory a long-healedscar the long pink muscle rupturesmoistening the mouths arroyo

red net (the slow members lonely missive) timely ripped,hectic and terse,a lobotomized muse autonomically muttering

ecumenical names,or the dumb litany of dna

eructations tarred and etiolatedyet ardent foam

a thread sore and teething

with agues knot (more ineradicable than gordians)monosyllabic as I

segues tender naf,hot and contiguous,

gin old sleeves id. woeless the decalescent

necessity, a night lingeringly Gnostic and idle,a thousand hours descendantbirthed again and shed, your absence an anemic typo, an ought

near all, popular axioms sugared coat.

a lilting list deled (is deied), fuming with hot ears yesterday,now a melting somnolence, erupting in a tamed umbra,a named pear molting an age of tear and frost.

the hectored keel names you a taut seizure,an aubade, an echo log, I a voice you wrote,

seized,your Alba on a pillory, sere, usurious, a yelpneither of wildernesses nor yet yours,a city of unhabited towers. a country of crepuscular silences.

a swarm of tongues.you, o, mouthing

whys: a library where countless bodieslay

prostrate stacked cordwood

cordially yoursfor the molten

tongues.candles will not be dened as Jesus votiveson the bed, our balloon stomachsmoist with dead love,invisible sighs in the sheets, Ive crept past oiled-downshadowsescaped memories of beds

in morning sheen, waist like motherglistening in placentamoons


11/25

for we whore our clitoridesno longer vanilla,softwe watch the walls

and ink our browswith henna--burn candlesburn incenseburn like a Vesuvial eye

this world of disappearing footstepsand silent prayer, performing illusionsof art not omensnot immensity of ghostsin searching broken glass

one must leave spacebetween the cracks

*


12/25

ash/head/high/lights denespaces where gods lie,presence being a form of artice

in a space

all space

accid tendons ashwith lightning arcs of

agony, for after all, wehave never movednever stirred

even rising from a bed

awash in shadows; beinggods we do not wish to see

the brute thrustsof oceanic memory

two gaping absencescoll(oc)ated, margins just-ied and fraying the bar

yawns, as thoughtof trespass must

to let the darkness swallowus, to thread, with arabesquesof dear john letters, to-

gather; you may speakour silence yet

in the hung-over dawnyour footsteps creaking upthe spines staircase to-

ward the hauntedhouses of the skull.

imagine all the lonely ghostswalking in

the soft rain of your blood.


13/25

escaping through the window leavessilence & her sweat behind--nowis a tiny sheath upon the cranium

a tongue ornament-tinyan orb pregnantpolished spit & metallic loquatone miniature machine

polished sunlight into bellybee-swollenescape the Swarming Room

all red curtains, are, backdrop

against a swollen chairthat of careful porcelaintender dew leads from

we are specks barely placed

inside sunken-into eyesthat of wires spoken ofsubtly & without observation

Only succeeding in her sweatbefore the diffused sunlight kissthe rush of escape


14/25

totalsme nowinbeige

we imag(in)e a color a placea mood abode

a space exact andcompleteinitself

werepose

in our cartographers dreamsa map that was a place /beginningof a fantasy epic

--

to dayI min black

back words mo(u)rning

--

she onlysucceeded in her weight herself constant ly surpassingas sols collapse to span

as in after -glow

an echo tolled in thehollows of sungold after- noona hum as of lastsummers beessilkfuzz legs strumm-ing nerves wire-wrapped chords

tongues polished mahogany, leavinga dewdrop of lacquerhardening to crystalline cracks, tracing

the hours alluvial branchessoon come a chrysalis to sift to dust


15/25

ab ovo: *thus shell brittlekeptwhere waxy sheath unfurls

with: where clogs fur mossy

in the sealant: weve kept

spittle she

nights dew-stung: with pearl:here eyes waxed-awake beginas oor constellations:the

mosque-prayer a tongue

of origin: her virgin

fawns glossa

chastised: gentle yew strung-out:

to catch a weeping mother:

offer milk: offer egg whites:

*utterance: *that coo of malignant

muscles: twitchingneedle: barn-raised:


16/25

body to engineer the isin the same way that the seahad only to lick the earth where it grewto a pins bones

down through the tombs inward arch

there a felicitous light swells into substance which sees as you seethat at most the past is lost and

no more walks in the wood.I was thinking, but suffering does not. Thenone man no longer made one thing.

the wrecked horn of the body wracked

at the fever of tonguesto demand the time of dayfrom the meatus. running water

never disappointed.

a blurring one can see means they will never nd itat the going rate your body gave youthen. then the truth is then

they fall in lovewithout knowing that you knocked. then

to grant life, then I would darkenwhere some sound (some labial) might have kept the cave openlike wood left in the rain and then- so much light, gone -enamored, forgiven by dust

they were never violentsimply forgotten by the goodness of beaststhe velvet slipping evening airtheir esh now refers(even as they lie side by side like two

blood oranges, bereft to pimpled skin)not to ochre or to humus

but to communities where the news is deliveredand lips taste of backs of postage stamps(where things belong together with themselves)

meaning less, but means none the less.


17/25

what ash-talcum to spore the body

in a sea of white warmth

as the brow damp with seaspray

an octopus dons fresh epidermis

you prick your ngers

tug a bobbin, its milky anges

double-up at the thought

of yarn and wire--thinking

of salinity and vapour parted

about the tongue

with lips arched and incandescent

Ive rolled you on my tongue esh

and found the spittle most relaxing

a sheen of silky amphetamines

the hair grows wild about the ankles

and falls in seaweed bath, dead nettles

providing the gimlet of coral teeth

to shift against, to roll hallowed against

the shore

I display the bone wreckage in a glass jar

you see the sponge humus coarsened and skeletal

cremains--all portals between the skin afore the

sphere before the magnitude of worlds unspoken


18/25

we want to feel how the shell must feel

as the barren wasteland echoes in volumes

as the ash settles into pumice against the brow

we covet, tense into cylinders, unveiling the impenetrable

breath of rocky surfaces--alone--hollowed-out--counter

to creations bounty, its Beauty.


19/25

what ash to come to porethe cauls canal

in white seizuresthe moths

swarm to root

chitinous resin of yesterdays shed as spideresh

sublimes the lankly hanging tendons ache.needle prick and wheel

spinas threads

wick an oily rewire-twitch ignition

of twinning tongues

hips concave andvex lips co

llapse then llatewax and enteeth can

not or celledtheme at

dear dearth hold this

slow coldlapse to fold

still, teething you slowbone rend thruinfatpink

your lips cicatrix

dry esh to saline sandpaper medryly rust

ling

dip your claws in inkI pulse &write,

rite

right

me me relic query enrapt in soiled sheets stilled waves


20/25

your maize-husk, your bone rattle, maracaslled with milkteeth

its arid, sere

what speaksthe pulse all iron reeks of

that sounds

yet cradled inthe horns peristaltic stop motion

growth


21/25

a shadow pregnant--take your maternal mouthinto the dark & hold

not your wings--emboldenedin my mouth--

but rather the solitude of

each feather

each aerie in the cloudstranslated into cool blue,

planted kisses, a trailof serpents & dusk dustedabout the hips, the mist again?

(he, rhetorically)

not from candelabrum, your relicas I thought the wings artful, liturgical,

every down lining disastermoist with debris, efuviapleasures tattered, presumed

so wither-wild, ghostly in the great cometsof your eyes, Ive seen cinematic

chargesof lapped-up sea-foam& swallow

how the birds loopabout the head in halo-form

know the pleasures of greed, of pickingthe skin apart to nd the most fullling meat

or how, once sparkling,your body stretched to greet mein a great crucixion

a bloom of red salivafrom your palms

& the ashes, fauna, faint music

in the distance

circling about the head


22/25

your mouthful of mint-green hallways sterile lighta pang as delicateas sparrow bones as you

tongue each phalange andvertebrae a minute

muscle utters a nal throb and

eruptsa shiver of pluckedeshbeneatha forest ofautumnal trees coruscates

in a febrile breathdreaming of the little thingsyou nger alluvial veins, donningtimelike a suit of scales:

borne off to ceaseless little wars.

::


23/25

recall to bone& hope to pebble womb--

the day is done when bodyinto ash

( I was counting beyond)

the waves between thighswhile shadows allowed no

modication in the thick

he parched earthwith mourn& of morn

thawed & calmveins, the windowsill;a love for rare birds

the we self-confessedinside each others skin

erratic--------

the mask of me waitsto be misplaced

somewhere in the night


24/25

of no, or dawnin no

the raw yawnsspace enough for us

a word erupts a bonewhich, once owered, like

a reeking orchid beds us

abo/ides an endin ush & creeper

our nails shriek cross

alphabetic blackboardsto raise a calcite dusk

which only limns again

silkendry

*

busking (on) each othersstreet

corners

walking, the wrong side, riskingnight

soil deluge

or redlightspecials

do your

Saturns daynight

*

to sift and scar

the chaff in windof breath

a way to weightlessness again

alls thus in excessexecuted

in ecclesiaeas in a will

last


25/25

immortal remnant, at least, whats

passed-on.

what a stolen key forgoton tumbling locksof Bluebeards for-

bidden parlor:

- same as words upon a pageforgot

that whats said is alwaysat expanse of silence. is

(so) silenced

that the urn will never beas beautiful as was

when red by the artisans callused palmslest eyes it was lent weight

not mask but workthe febrile accid eshthe tic-tock swinging hinder partstoo sea-rich this stink to forgetin the face of Romes glossed pages

or all the glancing (glazing) faces

that throw (ow) her on the wheel.

XENOMORPHIA

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