How to Be Conserved

Be broken almost, and male. This waythe metaphor is best, the body    of the male a more susceptible surface for the work

of time and light. We sag. We matour hairy skin and begin, daily, that graceless    way we have with decay. Be lithol red. Be Rothko's

1963 Harvard Murals and hang shamefullyin the Holyoke Center for decades then wait. Be ripped,    spattered with food, and faded. Be removed.

Meet a girl on the Internet who tells you she's seen worse. Wearyour best jeans to the bar on Allen Street    where you meet over drinks and decide to hide

your fractures and the blackstains in your lower left-hand corner, the unfortunate    result of a shipping accident in the '70s. Tell her

the only joke you know. She will laugh. Askwhat she does for a living and listen as if you know    nothing about traction crackle. About heartbreak and the bone

loneliness of a single color on its own. Be far from home and a little bittipsy. Get drunk. Tell her everything.    Most of this she will have guessed already—the stress

lines of your face as your failedrelationships, the particulate    matter of your back as beauty's

refusal. Do not believe in love. Or believe in loveas something ideal and distant    like Giotto's blood red O for the Pope, his perfect

circle of— Say it is almost closing time.Leave. Be cold. Be coatless and exposed. Walk her    all the way home and when invited in say yes

but only for a minute. Mean all night. Meana life. Or let her drag the battered canvas    of your body to bed. Let her

stretch it across the covers, each cleaved layer, and loveyou clean. See. Be    the red she lets live.