deliver unto me thy downtown brain un-puzzled from cunt labyrinth for I may never join you in the seaweed nets in the sunk hotels in the spongey jungles passive womb tubed mudlined herbal cast closet vast as Mrs. God what? you no come up? splash splash hidden for a newer tongue? for a nobler tongue? for dirtier tongue? for F. tongue? for stranger? any stranger doing this to you would be more honored any stranger how strange therefore therefore I go down maybe where I meant to go like a snail this automatic tongue slides down the aquarium moss shoot there is a ridge tender and yielding as the casting join of a hollow chocolate bunny I ride it down don’t be ashamed all smells are alchemized tongue goes ring around a rosy lifesaver flavor mud candy this is a better common button we both have we must kiss assholes because we each poor one of us has one we cannot kiss it is ringed with minnie bills they Bible dance it is ringed with stunted petals tongue dives petals open shiver petals tighten in a rubber knot I talk stiff now dig dig dig bump bump bump thud on hills of petal knot get in there hands pull cheeks apart pull apart cheeks of Edith’s fabulous private hers hers they give squeeze they yield like halves of ripe peach like very cooked chicken perfectly lovely blood balloons this is Edith its virgin pink brown hairy same as mine same same as us all poor charmen who flood the world on our knees this is solid prose this is mystery of everyday thus I insert cuneiform face mouth to sphinx for my tongue was only a test game on rosy sphinx hole I focus my mouth for pure talk gnawing suck adoration shit danger love bravery open close open close goes the surface petals closing to feel its own little cliffs of muscle opening in terrible abandon red desperate as baby robin throat oh Edith ass membrane gasping all my flock of mouth bathing pruning fluttering in the sunny bird bath on a pillar of charity bowel where am I now now don’t go way here I am simply with my face between her buttocks which hands have drawn apart my chin does automatic good to cunt now I let cheeks go they squeeze me in I squeeze me in I squash my nose sealing juice infant shit games in my brain listen Edith listen to me smother listen darling love it is thy hairy hole I suck are we not joined Edith are we not proved Edith are we not breathing Edith are we not awesome lovers Edith are we not filthy postcards are we not good meals Edith are we not conversing miraculously darling pink evil fartrisk terror position darling I swear I loved you Edith grab grab jumps the little crater kiss kiss kiss kiss Edith Edith do the same to me do the same to me pull my withered bum on your face I make it easy do the same to me do the same to me do the same to me Edith lilacs Edith Edith Edith Edith Edith Edith turning in our sleep making spoons of ourselves Edith Edith Edith Edith please appear as mushrooming dream from this poor Aladdin cock Edith Edith Edith Edith in your sweet skin envelope Edith Edith thy lonely husband Edith thy lonely husband thy lonely husband thy apples thy run thy creases thy dark lonely husband
26
Somewhere in my research I learned about Tekakwitha’s Spring. It was a Jesuit speaking sweetly of it in a Schoolbook. Il y a longtemps que je t’aime. I must have paused in the library. Out of the dust I hummed the old running tune. I thought of icy streams and clear pools. Christ spoke through the priest for half a paragraph. He speaks about a spring called Tekakwitha’s Spring. The priest is our Edouard Lecompte, and because of this half paragraph I know he loved the girl. He died December 20, 1929, le 20 décembre 1929. You died, Father. This priest I take into my heart whom I did not like at the beginning because he seemed to write for the Church and not the Lily How It Grows. The spring refreshed me that night as did the snows of another. I felt its clear crystal. It brought the created world into my cubicle, the cold and radiant outlines of the things that be. Entre le village, he writes, Entre le village et le ruisseau Cayudetta, Between the village and the brook Cayudetta, au creux d’un bosquet solitaire, in the hollow of a lonely grove, sortant de dessous un vieux tronc d’arbre couvert de mousse, ensuing from beneath an old moss-covered tree trunk, chantait et chante encore de nos jours, sang and in our own day still sings, une petite source limpide, a small clear spring.… It was here the girl drew water, each day, for nine years. How much you must know, Katerine Tekakwitha. What a dream of sobriety, glorious sobriety, glorious as the shine of facts, feel of skin, what a hunger for sobriety assaults me here found among ripped firecracker carcasses, selfish burns, spilled personal multitudes. 3285 times you came to this old tree. Long live History for telling us. I want to know you as you knew the path. How tiny the path of your deer shoes. The fragrance of forests is in the world. It clings to our leather clothes wherever we go, even to the whip hidden in our wallet. I believe in Gregory’s sky, crowded with saints, yes, Unlettered Pope. The path is crowded with facts. The cold pine river is still there. Let the facts drag me out of the kitchen. Let them keep me from playing myself like a roulette wheel. How good to know something she did.
27
The twenty-seventh day since I began because of a promise to F.
