85 Lust and desire poems

But inside her, there is always velvet, velvet with its give and yield, the kind you find at a pet store, a bin full of long ears and noses busy snuffing up nerves among the cedar chips and their eyes opening wide as if rabbits couldn't know what softness brings, as if they'd never know the smell of something long stored away now brought into light, and now too her mother with a camera pointing at her, red child on the lap of the Easter rabbit, softness of the body hiding inside the costume, eyes glinting from the wide holes in the mask, not a single sobbing breath of wind down the trail of mesquite and broom foot-printing the hills of some rancher's land. The bird dog lifts his ears to the sound of velvet, the girl listens to the drawn cries of a crow, her father walks with the silence of the shotgun, waiting for the pointer to find scent, the rabbit at the end of it blinking, its wide eyes shrinking from the scuffle of their feet like velvet settling, laid over lines, drying across the ceiling of an uncle's garage where they talk inside the smell of salted skin. At least three dollars for each good pelt he says, and they scream like children when, sleeves rolled over his forearms, he brings the club down on their heads, saving their feet for cheap key chains, for luck that softness doesn't seem to have inside of cages, chicken wire, tubes of water, and sometimes boys who try kicking the cage around to see what happens to velvet tumbling. And, in the after quiet, she bites the hands reaching toward her, so they stone her, they open her belly and pull some things out, open the pink albino eye and groan at the fluid inside. Then they bury the carcass without thinking first of washing their sticky hands in the sink before eating dinner, before setting the table, in the still softness of her beige room, she sits on the carpet picking at the velveteen of Bunny's stuffed neck, the rabbit's eyes dull with scratches, eyes left behind on her bed at night when she stands in the hall, hearing her father breathe in his room in the darkness, on the futon, kicking off the sheets. Awake from a fluid dream of a woman's eyes staring from behind a gag, her white skin settling in fat pools around her, naked, bald. And a man's voice said,this is your rabbit, so she woke to this dream inside her, with his teeth wrapped in her hair, and his hands inside her thighs where he fingered her coldly. But it has always been like this—wild, insidious, and commanding because she gives to it, fascinated by it and caught by it, as velvet only listens and is quiet.

A spirit came down and whispered in our drunk ears mark your wombs with wild roses and between beers I dreamed that we were soldiers missing our mothers which explains why we are seventeen and in a tattoo parlor that smells of ships and motorcycles, of leather and ocean, of marijuana and sad men’s blood. We each ask for a single rose with a ribbon around the stem, for a word, some power. We want to be fire. The artist changes channels. We watch Looney Tunes as his needles start. When we stop at the liquor store, our roses, orange and violet, bleeding through the bandages, I want to tell you that if we ever find ourselves blindfolded in a war, or in an apple metaphor, accused of ruining it for everybody with hunger, or knowledge, I would not insist on how sacred is the tree or the light, or how sacred is what moves us— I’d become a storyteller. And out of our inevitable estrangement I’d make us up again and again.

Sex is always monstrous. Blood appears in the air next to the body but nobody asks a question about the body. “Please touch me there. More. Oh god.” For a hitchhiker, the problem of the boudoir is transferred to a makeshift, itchy, unsafe space on the verge of a New Mexico highway. It is often the sex of another era, in which the socks and dress shirt/blouse are not necessarily removed. I hitchhiked in the beginning because it seemed glamorous to me, ultra-American, like a Christian with an entrenched migraine who resorts to brand-name anti-inflammatories when prayer does not do the trick. At first, my encounters on the thoroughfares of your country were quotidian; after all, it is not really hitchhiking to buy a Greyhound ticket three weeks in advance then have a going-away party in a dorm with a banner and balloons. Again, this is an example of departure in another time. As a foreign student on scholarship, it was an ordinary matter to file for an extension for the completion of a thesis on Salman Rushdie’s early works. Nevertheless: “How can we keep tabs on these JI visa holders, who come over here and . . . the university, as an institution, really needs to be more accountable. We need a database and we need a system of checks and balances to make sure any change of address is verified by at least two pieces of information. They need to do their course work and then they need to go home.” I didn’t want to go home. This is a boring sentence. Perhaps for you Oregon is a calming word, evoking images of blackberry pie, ocean vistas, and the capture of suspected felons. I had never heard the word Oregon before. Like the distance of Scotland from London, it seemed impossibly far. A beautiful hazard: to go and keep going. How can I put this? In England, nobody ever, ever, ever did this. I, who once drove straight to Glasgow with a thermos of instant coffee mixed with milk and sugar, in a dinged-up Datsun Cherry, was considered an anomaly. “Are you demented? Why do you want to drive in a car to bloody Scotland? It’s seven hours on the M1, man!” Though, outwardly, I was wan and somewhat reticent, I . . . no, I was. My sexual experience consisted of lying under an elm tree in Hyde Park at the age of seventeen and being told by an undergraduate student of the London School of Economics that my breasts in that position, from that angle, resembled two fried eggs. We were meeting in a park as per the era. I am sure contemporary Punjabi-British teenagers are fearless individuals, undaunted by the prospect of community censure. Back then we met by the iron-wrought gate on a park bench, on a path built for seventeenth-century promenades. It is always a century. In my century, sex was a field of restraint and intensity unsurpassed by anything except drinking coffee in a foreign country like Scotland or Wales and borrowing my father’s car forever. “Are you out of your bleeding head? Your dad’s going to skin you alive!” In some sense, this (driving) is the opposite of hitchhiking, in which the interior of the car is always unfamiliar. The day was real in a different way back then, in the way that it sensitized me to risk, a kind of twin to permisson. Two black swans: that day and this one, history and fiction, what I went for and what I really wanted, which I didn’t know until I got there by which time it was impossible to consider the long journey home as either practical or sensible, considering the trouble I was already in and the rain, which had started to come down in a series of reddish sheets; the streetlamps were pink. On Prince Street, in Glasgow, I saw the sign for American style pizza and went down the steps to the basement café. The tables were coated with green plastic. There was hot tea, which the waitress slung down my gullet with a funnel as I focused my eye on a laminated print of a white, blocky rose with a pink dot at its center. “Charles Rennie Mackintosh,” the waitress, pronouncing “osh” so that it rhymed with horse. “Are you from India?” “Would you like some jam with that scone? I bet they don’t have scones in India, do they?” “More tea? I heard you have a lot of tea, over there, isn’t that right?” Plan b: The extension of my throat. The euphoria of theft. Other countries with their sayings and beliefs. The original plan, formulated by my father during his morning communte across London: marrying a British-born Hindu Brahmin dentist with brown skin, but not too brown, and rosy cheeks. Note on the mantelpiece, tucked behind the marble figurine of Shiva: what is forthcoming under the original plan? Extraction? What kind of sex is possible on the dentist’s chair late at night for that girl, your girl, who nervously asks for a blanket? She has her socks on. She’s shivering. It is sometimes sex when you touch yourself beneath the proffered blanket clearly not washed between patients, but in this scene the limbs of the dentist’s young Asian bride are rigid and smell faintly of wintergreen-scented nail polish or mouthwash. Dad, “please don’t swallow.” Rinse then spit. Spit then swallow. I could not go home and so, after a brief visit to the Hill House—Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s art deco home on the Firth of Clyde, where he painted geometric rosebuds forever in a kind of frenzy, as it seemed from the décor—I turned left and kept driving. I drove my car into the Atlantic and kept driving, my chest very tight beneath the surface. It was difficult to feel anything or really to see, and so I can only say that I went into a damaging ocean. This is going. Damaged, washed up on the mythical shores of New Jersey a few days later, my car failed to start. This is later, when the car stopped, and, looking up from my hands, white-knuckled on the steering wheel, I realized that I was okay. Now I am here, in the future of color. I’m sorry I do not have more to say about the period of submergence that preceded my arrival. I am not interested in it. I do not recall it. I . . . It was only when my car stopped that I realized what I had to do, on my own terms, with my own two legs: get going. Is that how you say it? Get up and go. The destiny of my body as separate from my childhood: I came here to hitchhike. I came here to complete a thing I began in another place. Removing wet pages from my rucksack, I lay them on the shore, securing them with beautiful shells and pebbles. When they dried, I folded them into squares and put them in my pocket, next to my body. Misshapen, exhilarated, I said get. I said go. Get up now and go. “Are you okay?” “Do you need a ride somewhere?” “Let me look in the trunk. I might have something in there. Here you go. You’re shivering! Do you need to go to the hospital? At least let me buy you a cup of coffee.”

Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame Is lust in action; and till action, lust Is perjured, murd'rous, bloody, full of blame, Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust, Enjoyed no sooner but despisèd straight, Past reason hunted; and, no sooner had Past reason hated as a swallowed bait On purpose laid to make the taker mad; Mad in pursuit and in possession so, Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme; A bliss in proof and proved, a very woe; Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream. All this the world well knows; yet none knows well To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

each  night  I  count  ghostlets  of  how  my  body  was wanted  /  behind with deadheading  /  rose hips have come  /  behind with actions that count only  /  when the  timing  is  right  /  I  took out  a contract  /  it was imprudent  in  value  /  behind  with  asepsis  /  hello microbes  of  my  body  /  we   sleep  together  /  hello cats  /  I  make  my  bed  daily  /  of the three types of hair on the sheets  /  only one is human  /  I count the bedrooms  /  I never had sex in  /  but there were cars /   wild    woods   /   blackfly    has    got   to   all   the nasturtiums  /  you cannot dig  up  a grapevine  /  and expect shelter to come  /  I am touched by  your letter /  writes  a  friend  /   you  prevaricate  desire   /   says message  /  all  this  fucking  / with  no  hands  on  me

Deflores. What makes your lip so strange? This must not be betwixt us. Beatrice. The man talks wildly. Deflores. Come kisse me with a zeal now. Beatrice. Heaven I doubt him. Deflores. I will not stand so long to beg 'em shortly. Beatrice. Take heed Deflores of forgetfulness, 'twill soon betray us. Deflores. Take you heed first; Faith y'are grown much forgetfull, y'are to blame in't. Beatrice. He's bold, and I am blam'd for't. Deflores. I have eas'd you of your trouble, think on't, I'me in pain, And must be as'd of ou; 'tis a charity, Justice invites your blood to understand me. Beatrice. I dare not. Deflores. Quickly. Beatrice. Oh I never shall, speak if yet further of that I may lose What has been spoken, and no sound remain on't. would not hear so much offence again for such another deed. Deflores. Soft, Lady, soft; the last is not yet paid for, oh this act Has put me into spirit; I was as greedy on't As the parcht earth of moisture when the clouds weep. Did you ot mark, I wrought my self into't. Nay sued, and kneel'd for't: Why was all that pains took? You see I have thrown contempt upon your gold, Not that I want it, for I doe piteously, In order I will come unto't, and make use on't, But 'twas not held so pretious to begin with; For I place wealth after the heels of pleasure, And where I not resolv'd in my belief That thy virginity were perfect in thee, I should but take my recompense with grudging, As if I had but halfe my hopes I agreed for. Beatrice. Why 'tis impossible thou canst be so wicked, Or shelter such a cunning cruelty, To make his death the murderer of my honor. Thy language is so bold and vitious, I cannot see which way I can forgive it with any modesty. Deflores. Push, you forget your selfe, a woman dipt in blood, and talk of modesty. Beatrice. O misery of sin! would I had been bound Perpetually unto my living hate In that Piracquo, then to hear these words. Think but upon the distance that Creation Set 'twixt thy blood and mine, and keep thee there. Deflores. Look but into your conscience, read me there, 'Tis a true Book, you'l find me there your equall: Push, flye not to your birth, but settle you In what the act has made you, y'are no more now, You must forget your parentage to me, Y'are the deeds creature, by that name You lost your first condition, and I challenge you, As peace and innocency has turn'd you out, And made you one with me. Beatrice. With thee, foul villain? Deflores. Yes, my fair murdress; Do you urge me? Though thou wri'st maid, thou whore in thy affection, 'Twas chang'd from thy first love, and that's a kind Of whoredome in thy heart, and he's chang'd now, To bring thy second on the Alsemero, Whom 'by all sweets that ever darkness tasted, If I enjoy thee not thou ne're enjoyst, I'le blast the hopes and joyes of marriage, I'le confess all, my life I rate at nothing. Beatrice. Deflores. Deflores. I shall rest from all lovers plagues then, I live in pain now: that shooting eye Will burn my heart to cinders. Beatrice. O sir, hear me. Deflores. She that in life and love refuses me, In death and shame my partner she shall be. Beatrice. Stay, hear me once for all, I make thee master Of all the wealth I have in gold and jewels, Let me go poor unto my bed with honor, And i am rich in all things. Deflores. Let this silence thee, The wealth of all Valentia shall not buy my pleasure from me, Can you weep Fate from its determin'd purpose? So soon may weep me. Beatrice. Vengeance begins; Murder I see is followed by more sins. Was my creation in the womb so curst, It must ingender with a Viper first? Deflores. Come, rise, and shrowd your blushes in my bosome, Silence is one of pleasures best receipts: Thy peace is wrought for ever in this yeelding. 'Lasse how the Turtle pants! Thou'lt love anon, What thou so fear'st, and faintst to venture on. Exeunt. (Act III, scene iv) Enter Deflores bringing in Beatrice Deflores. Here we are, if you have any more To say to us, speak quickly, I shall not, Give you the hearing else, I am so stout yet, and so I think that broken rib of mankind. Vermandero. An Host of enemies entred my Citadell, Could not amaze like this,Joanna, Beatrice, Joanna. Beatrice. O come not neer me sir, I shall defile you, I am that of your blood was taken from you For your better health, look no more upon't, But cast it to the ground regardlessly, Let the common shewer take it from distinction, Beneath the starres, upon yon Meteor Ever hang my fate, 'mongst things corruptible, I ne're could pluck ti from him, my loathing Was Prophet to the rest, but ne're believ'd Mine honour fell with him, and now my life. Alsemero, I am a stranger to your bed, Your bed was coz'ned on the nuptiall night, For which your false-bride died. Alfermero. Diaphanta? Deflores. Yes, and the while I coupled with your mate At barly-break; now we are left in hell. Vermandero. We are all there, it circumscribes here. Deflores. I lov'd this woman in spite of her heart, Her love I earn'd out of Piracquos murder. Tomaso. Ha, my brothers murtherer. Deflores. Yes, and her honors prize Was my reward, I thank life for nothing But that pleasure, it was so sweet to me, That I have drunk up all, left none behinde, For any man to pledge me. (Act V, scene iii)

I laze about, deranged and unafraid to godly kiss you, kiss the pharmacist that whipped you, undilute, to dilate high your animus of lime and lye. I know of an upstairs hell. A creamy, vascular thump through bonus years of things that pass and things that do not move. Your cellular mouth. Your mess of inattention. Now that none of us are good looking I think that/they are right. Strokes of light you taped across my nipple. Patterns staked to fake the love we cannot feel so slick the miser of your hand through my bad heart. Genius, you are blond enough. Once in a while. And in the end, when I sweep coolly up and will not be drawn back, then I will tell you of it. How I can. In writing, I am making an attempt to depict my beautiful nose through imagery. I will tell you of it. Once in a while. I will miss you. And the tape. To be flung down, petals from a balcony.

I want a red dress. I want it flimsy and cheap, I want it too tight, I want to wear it until someone tears it off me. I want it sleeveless and backless, this dress, so no one has to guess what’s underneath. I want to walk down the street past Thrifty’s and the hardware store with all those keys glittering in the window, past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly, hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders. I want to walk like I’m the only woman on earth and I can have my pick. I want that red dress bad. I want it to confirm your worst fears about me, to show you how little I care about you or anything except what I want. When I find it, I’ll pull that garment from its hanger like I’m choosing a body to carry me into this world, through the birth-cries and the love-cries too, and I’ll wear it like bones, like skin, it’ll be the goddamned dress they bury me in.

Display thy breasts, my Julia, there let me Behold that circummortal purity; Between whose glories, there my lips I’ll lay, Ravished in that fair Via Lactea .

Whenas in silks my Julia goes, Then, then (methinks) how sweetly flows That liquefaction of her clothes. Next, when I cast mine eyes, and see That brave vibration each way free, O how that glittering taketh me!