PG. TWO

Tender-slow nifartensplay, she says. It's not the way you're living that disturbs me. It's the bow tie.
          I can't take it, can't make it straight, can't be the man you want me to be in the dark, where we are, there, in your womb, here, he says, pushing up against your wall, he says, stretching out the sheets, as in: squid-sloop bubblegum pop, there you are! I feel you!
          Suck in, please. Give back, she says. That's that.
          And then he's being drug along there, by this cord here, connected to that ship there, where it hurts here, where there is tenderness, here: X
          Give him a little tenderness, he says. That's what he says. He says, A glass casts a half-shadow over half her face because we're upside down.
          OooO! But I think:
          If that's true,
          why can't I feel your face? Fact:
          You've got the strongest hips around,
          but your knees are bent in slits.
          Bend them back in stilts, she says.
          So you can walk above the water —
          a lady fly at a fish fry: & you know,
          last time this year, the fish were a
          little bit like French fries leaping out,
          begging for directions to Fisherman's
          Wharf, toward In-N-Out Burger,
          cruising for a br00sing,
          sniffing salty air and seagull-spray.
          Slay, slay, slay! And that's that.
          He ran his hand along the grass. Palmed it tough, gouging fingers rough into the earth. She cried. He grabbed her neck, twisting, saying: Is this the way he held your leg back or was it gentle like a rolling hill? Were there goats? Was there an ocean? Was the rock black? Was the ground unsteady? Bubbling full of magma? Just beneath the surface? Could you feel it slipping? Waves breaking over and through the rock black as some demented babe in a marble bathtub splashes, splashing, lashing out at you? Tongue all splayed and cockeyed-like and gnarle-faced with that loose canine hanging down? Fact: I've seen him too. He's a loose cannon.
          But it's like, Is all this really necessary?
          And he's all, Is all this really necessary, she asks. It is totally necessary, it.
          Then she's all holding a gun to her thigh, bending over backwards to see the ground the way it could have been if this were just a normal day. But it wasn't, of course & then, she's not. Of course, she fell over. Her hair spun-up: a whirlpool twisting water where the ship sank slow like loose lips beneath, as in:
                                                            GOOSELIVERRR
    all I ask of you is love . . . and testicles
                                                            GOOSEPIMPLER
          knees bent back for a skin-dive
                                                            RAISIN TARTER
                    cannonball or jackknife?
                                                            RAIS0N DARTER
                    ankles matched to butt cheeks. It's so cold, so:
                                                            queef!
                    Hand me a paper towel, she says.
                    Of course, he says. And that's fact.