Deconstruct, and: Peanuts

Deconstruct

Now that I've deconstructed his body,his ears and collarbone, his livera sleeping dog in my lap, my fingers playingthe twelve vertebraeof his thoracic spine, the xylophonethey make, their weightand weightlessness, now that I've eaten fromthe bowl of his sternum, his pelvis,licked clean all the little bonesthat make his hand a hand, always clearingmy plate, there are no leftovershere, the fridge is empty,the kitchen burnt down in a great firethat started when the flintof his hips met the steel of my hips,all the ones and zeroespouring out, pouring outlike cider but also slow like honey,the flash floodsinside my head quiet for once,everybody's brothersaccounted for, the CT scan coming backclean, now that the lumpis only a lump, now that allour teeth get to stay,I have untiedevery knot in his back,his back the only surfboard my palmswant to ride, the auger shellof his tailbone,the word coccyx making love to my mouth,now that I've eatenthe twenty-four birds of his ribcage, have sucked the silkfrom their feathers,now that I've slashed and burnedthe field of him,now that I've taken him whole,I watch the smokerise from his lips and exhale the smokeand inhale the smoke.

Peanuts

I wish I knew the answer to the questionthe gutted, flipped-over caron Mulholland Drive is asking, or why the soundof fingers snappingfills my mouth with peanuts,the way I fill my mouth with peanuts at baseball gamesand county fairs and long shiftsat the pharmacy, when night hangsover the windowslike the kind of silk scarfRussian grandmothers adore.I don't know if the windhas an arm around the waist of the flying leavesor if they're pushingpast each other like strangersin an airport. Or why last weekwhen my friend showed me picturesof her newborn daughteron her phone, she scrolled past so many photos ofgunshot woundsand arms whose flesh looked as thoughit had been gouged out with a fork.I didn't ask whothose people were or what she didwith their photos, just asshe didn't ask if I preferred to spit or swallow,if I stared at strangers' bodiesin locker rooms.Mostly I've been staringinto the eye of the washing machine and wonderingwhen the Zen part will happen.When Wittgenstein said,The inexpressible is inexpressibly contained in what is expressed,was he talking about language or sexor this disease I probably havethat doesn't have a name yet?Yesterday, I slid a check across a tablein my head and a lawyer'shand reached out to take it. The fusemy skin was hiding sparkedlike a hair straightener in a bathtub,and no one knew what to saybut they did.