16
Take This Medicine On An Empty Stomach
Can’t we share your prescription?
The mechanism of sleep eludes me.
I tempt you out of that cannibal
jacket with the hard red welt
on my watch-strangled wrist. I think
you are baroque and broken. Smoke-
drunk and glistening. Can’t we find
the value of absolute zero? Handcuffs
and cigarettes are the system (or the method)
for disintegration. I need a man who is
ambidextrous, musically-inclined.
You fit the bill. Undress me.
My point is this: I like it
this way. Don’t look. It only hurts
for a minute.
Susan Slaviero really needs a cool Nom de Plume. She is considering writing under the name Patches C. Grove (derived from the classic formula of first pet + childhood street). She writes because (so far) no one else has volunteered to fill all the blank spaces in her head. Her sister once asked her if "poet" was code for "unemployed". She likes oatmeal cookies, but only without raisins, and she also happens to co-edit the online lit zine, blossombones
