Now We're Getting Somewhere Kim Addonizio (top books of all time TXT) 📖

be restored

& immortal diamonds will soon be yours.

GRACE

Let go & let God is my guard dog Beware

the ragged shithole hordes & bless

my chrome moly Bushmaster .223 rest

your asses nowhere near my rod & staff

I raise my beacon-hand &

torch anyone who doesn’t believe Jesus

was calved from a virgin & then ascended

to his penthouse & will raptor down

to smite Jews abortionists niggers

Muslims fags Obama the AntiChrist SATAN

WAS THE FIRST TO DEMAND EQUAL RIGHTS

outside the Knoxville Baptist Tabernacle

while a boy puts his tongue in another boy’s mouth

& they lie down together shy & barely breathing

HIGH DESERT, NEW MEXICO

Temple of the rattlesnake’s religion.

Deluge and heat-surge. Crèche of the atom’s

rupture. Night blackens like a violin

and bright flour falls from the kitchens of heaven.

This is where the seams begin to loosen,

where you can walk for miles in any direction—

rabbit, lizard, raven, insect drone—

and almost forget the shame of being human.

Smoke tree. Sage. Not everything is broken.

Horses appear at this remote cabin

to stand outside and wait for you to come

with a single apple. Abandon

your despair, you who enter here forsaken.

The wind is saying something. Listen.

SIGNS

This morning the East River Ferry is just a boat pulling up to the ugly little park in Williamsburg

& Manhattan isn’t the underworld projecting its eternal office buildings into those clouds

The seagull landing on my balcony isn’t an image of transcendence or being destroyed by love

There isn’t any meaning in things

There probably aren’t even any things

which is hard to think about & this morning I don’t want to think about anything

but I do, I think about . . . things

as each special, unique individual in the long line below my window steps onto the ferry

as rain slips down not representing the Many cleaved from the One & black umbrellas unfold

I think about the giant wax man in the museum with three wicks in his head slowly burning

& the hollow as his face starts to melt from the inside

& the heartsick woman who jumped from the bridge, hauled up & covered with a tarp on the dock

I’m sick of death & sick to death of romantic love but I still want to live

if only to rearrange the base metals of my depression

like canned lima beans on a mid-century modern dinner plate

My last love had beautiful green eyes

Eyes like two caged parrots refusing to say anything

Eyes like two rivers filling with toxic runoff

Maybe later today the sun will come out & smile like a kind nanny

but it won’t be a kind nanny, or even a mean nanny, shaking me hard

One day it will just cool, like . . . a star

When the clock says 11:11 it doesn’t mean

the design of things has risen to the surface & been made manifest

It means I’m still here hours later watching the boats dock & then leave without me

It means the people who commuted across the river to work on Wall Street

are still there, their eyes like suitcases of small, unmarked bills

& everything is going to change for the worse

THE EARTH IS ABOUT USED UP

like a sodden tampon & no place to throw it away

like an armpit-yellowed vintage blouse with see-through pearl bubble sleeves

like a tissue travel pack in a foreign bathroom & you have to squat over a hole in the floor

The earth is about used up, is the point I’m trying to drunkenly steer through the potholed streets

into the suburban garage of your ears

though you probably already know what’s up with the earth, but I am telling you because

because because because because because

The earth is about used up

like the preserved atrophied brain of a retired NFL defensive lineman leaking cryoprotectant

like the tender ass of the cow & the large heart of the racehorse

like a wind-up ladybug, ladybug

crawling in decelerating circles on LuxTouch marble tiles inlaid with precious stones

Even the ocean is gasping for air

while someone smokes a cigarette through their throat-hole

& sodas go flat in the heat

& a stack of National Geographics bloats in a rained-on cardboard box in a fallen shed

some animal dragged itself into to shit away its life

I’m standing on that box with my teeny megaphone, bringing you the news you know

wildly virtue signaling waving my mortal handkerchief dropping it at your feet

where it burns it burns here I don’t want it you take it please you take it

IN BED

The world is like an ugly person you’re supposed to love for their inner beauty

but some people are just ugly—if you poke them with a short needle

you find badly lit rooms of cheap wall-to-wall carpet

& metal shelves of racially insensitive trinkets

so it’s often better to avoid them completely

& mind your own business . . . in bed

Today is a good day to get things done . . . in bed

An atmospheric river has closed the zoo, the elephants are trudging through the mud

Trees are falling over like myotonic goats & not getting up again

At the bottom of the river you’re in a cozy submarine . . .

Cats asleep on either side of you . . .

as you think about Colette, who spent her last years in her apartment in the Palais-Royal . . .

with her phone & books & papers

Time wrote that her novels were about “quietly desperate women in love & in bed”

but that’s all the women I know except for the ones

whose beds are shallow graves

Sometimes it’s fun when in love to grow loudly desperate . . .

and write about it . . .

especially when your lover has left you alone . . .

to be cradled by your Microbead Boyfriend Pillow in its striking azure T-shirt

There are so many things you can accomplish, at home . . .

You can meet all sorts of lovely people . . .

You can fake an orgasm to hurry things along . . .

because you would rather be out having brunch with bottomless mimosas

or binge-watching other people having sex

With a man or just some sperm & the right equipment you can get a baby

& then bring it in bed to sleep with you

until it grows up and leaves you alone . . .

But beds are not just for sex or procreation

or sleep, or sleeplessness smoldering