*
For Rilke, beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror;
For Levis, terror is a state of complete understanding—
men have called me beautiful as if it were my name,
For Kenko, all beauty depends upon disappearance—
men have called me beautiful as if it were my name.
*
My skin shimmers,
reflects the love this body has had
from men who hide their valuables
and demand (what is valuable?)
I show them what
makes me beautiful.
The thin membrane of my body
pulls men farther and farther
outside their skin.
*
Their desire,
their longing to be
to be a boy, naked like a girl,
to be a boy, naked like a girl,
to be pulled from boyhood, by a girl
my body extracting the animal
that has caught the trail,
the hound dog whooping
before he chases the girl.
*
What will collide is, for now, apart.
My skin so finely tuned
to their appetite that I swell towards it.
The she bubble, the he bubble
thicken. The gather release,
the small clicking
of the tide—
clicking like a tongue pressed up against the back of teeth—
rolls back into itself
before reaching out again,
the pressure in the tip of the wave
to find, to touch, to coat
the sand, the pressure—to suffice—in one moment
where many moments will attempt, and fail,
to touch the essence of the shore,
the pressure in the tip of the wave squeezes
out coins collected by boys who made bets while I learned
to be kissed.
*
What if there is a man,
a man who removes the clothes, the symbols, the systems, the astonishments
I have worn until he finds the body, my body, underneath?
His touch would not be gentle,
meant as it is to dislodge everything that is not beauty. Every pattern
where beauty got stuck, every man-eaten eddy he clears. Not
for himself but for beauty,
beauty, pre-historic beauty, a verdant, lush,
endless forest-ocean breathing in
and out, in subterranean waves,
a discovery, not a terror:
What limits can pleasure have?
He would place no clay figurine, no creature dummy
of himself before beauty, has no desire,
no longing for his, or my, annihilation,
no abstract insight to replace my body with,
needs no currency, no natural resource,
but still he mines from deep within me
ores that leave me
approaching extinction.
With his touch he waltzes me to
the jumping-off place
above the sacrificial well,
the wrecked, bottomless, green water
where
I see my reflection—
how I’m so tired of carrying myself around
like luggage from one overhead compartment to
another, unpacking only long enough
to undress. He touches my syrup-slick thighs
and overhears my father’s voice
telling me you are very beautiful but also very ugly,
and my mother’s voice
telling me you are more beautiful than I ever was but maybe
you could do something about your ears.
He pins my neck,
my hair clotted with tears,
and makes me promise
not to efface myself.
He beats on my chest—
my chest the most beautiful question—
my one heart jumping,
as if to meet the moon
reaching through my chest wall to touch
the moon, the girl, I used to be.
The girl I used to be, the
moon, the gated-off girl
bobbing behind the leafless trees
in that silver pool of light
I sailed, naked as a pearl.
*
There was a boy I loved,
A boy with a lake in his backyard. I opened my eyes underwater
to watch him swim by, his silt–soaked eyes
beheld the girl he would discard,
her happy swimming body the crater he would drain himself from—
He called her his moon.
*
Beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror. But whose
terror is a state of complete understanding; on whose
disappearance does beauty depend? Terror
is a state of complete understanding,
or, my skin
that reflects the love this body has had
farther and farther outside the skin.
The clothes, the symbols, the systems, the astonishments
I have worn roll back in;
whose objectification will I take off last—
on whose disappearance does my beauty depend?
Terror is a state of complete understanding,
or, my skin
that reflects the love this body has had farther and
farther outside the skin
the pressure in the tip of the wave
whose touch is not gentle
the pressure in the tip of the wave squeezes out
coins collected by boys while I learned to be kissed
farther and farther outside my skin
the pressure—to suffice
the pressure in the tip of the wave
whose touch is not gentle
What limits can pleasure have?
An abstract insight, whose touch is not
gentle, and which mines
from deep within me ores
to replace my body with—
What limits can pleasure have?
The pressure in the tip of the wave
whose objectification will I take off last?—
luggage from one overhead compartment to another,
ores mined from deep within me,
the wave depending on its own disappearance, farther
and farther
outside my skin, out past my skin
What limits can pleasure have?
At the jumping-off place,
longing to be naked like a
girl, I see my reflection—
my chest the most beautiful question
the pressure in the tip of the wave
reaching through my chest wall to
touch the jumping-off place
overhead the moon
reaching through the chest wall to touch
the girl I used to be, the moon, the gated-off
girl effaced for the sake of my reflection.
Note: “Beautiful Girl, Ancient Thief” is a loose translation of a Chinese expression that refers to the moon lady. “As if to meet the moon” is from “Going for Water” by Robert Frost.