Discombobulating

by J. Marcus Weekley

                                         for Matt


It wasn’t us singing Respect in the shower.

It was your kisses like winter rain on my cheeks
and my gnarled hands clutching nothing.

It was my chest next to yours like two lions
caught in a bramble of briars, bloody hearts beating desperately.

It was the disentangling of marble bodies
from flaming souls.




Before I Stopped Clubbing

With the lights and the pounding and the bodies like neon,
gone in the waves of some new man’s sweaty lips
and skin and the after-the-evening-IHOP-trip.
Spending life-years for one chest against another
and the morning leaving ritual: the shower,
the ride home, the naked want.

I fell for a man with holes in his hands and an
all-day-foot-washing-service
and the rest of eternity to serve me unleavened hotcakes.





Modern

                    for Sarah Bell

I am tired of hearing those Vogue-girls’ pantyhose calls.
I am tired of pushing my tombstone up this hundred-dollar-bill hill.
I am tired of preaching 1-900 prophecies to Beethoven ears.

My diamond-pierced hands and feet and this woozing side-wound:
I no longer crawl, walk, or hobble.

I am a new metaphor:
a user-friendly on-sale monthly-bonus entertainment-center
(with cup-holders).

Plug me in.
Turn me on.
Use me.








©2002 by J. Marcus Weekley


J. Marcus Weekley has just graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi with his Master's degree in English. He lives with four roommates and their cat, Oliver, and will be moving to Beloit, Wisconsin in a month, then to Texas Tech in Lubbock for the doctoral program. He is also a visual artist. His work(poetry and/or photography) is forthcoming in Aileron, Snow Monkey, and Tundra, and he has had work in Fourth River and Modern Haiku. See more of his work at his Web site.


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