Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Do You Have Trouble Sleeping?



Still Life
I’m having trouble looking animals in the eye.
Their empty suits in outer space!
Monkeys injected with a virus to show off
Our eminent domain, the nervous system.
Teacup pigs we breed and obsessive mice 
Worrying themselves bald in a miniature opera.
For pleasures of the tongue we are
Winking cattle out of meadows
Slashing their throats and swiftly quartering them.
In riding habits with gold flame pins we ride horses
To hounds, chase a fennec fox until his red
Coat flares up against the extinction
Of light. Once in a circus we made
An elephant disappear and he did not mind.
-Kathy Nilsson









                                     


la event
skeletons sketched
in starlight sheik,
it takes more than oysters and tequila
to get me warm
but old bricks gleam
when textures of nonchalance
are hung on their walls
and you look even better
moving like you’ve forgotten
we’re all watching