We are Starved

A Paradise

26 LOVE LIKE UNTO WHITED SEPULCHRES Like Saturn devouring his son. Like Ugolino gnawing on his children’s bones. Like you and me, you and me. Fear of abandonment followed immediately by your wanting to call, attempt suicide, have me over for dinner, tell me I don’t love you. Where am I in all this? When you use my hands and mouth to eat with, swallowing yourself, your continual likeness, my son, my only son. Immoderation leads to rapture. Like the story you tell me of the woman who pushed a car up a hill with her children inside only to have it fall back, run over her, and catch fire. It is what she wanted, you say, it is what I want. 27 CHANTICLEER The dark tongue of it mouthing its way into the world, be the lesbian. My stepfather talking to me about sex. And afterward, the neighbor’s albino Shar-Pei, its awful barking, the air fraught with it, be the lesbian, be the lesbian. And he was right. And I was adored and then condemned. Woman, I do not know him, that man 28 shouting at me as we walk hand in hand, be the lesbian, be the lesbian. What does it mean? Being a man without being one? The sacrifice is in the idea of abandoning what came before, what continues after. And that the ending will not be this one. But the other names for that kind of dog— Meat-Mouth, Bone-Mouth. What it has come to mean, what it has done. ...