Kendra DeColo
Whoever believed these words
enough to carve each letter
into the green paint
of a bench drizzled with leaves
one autumn, must have loved, too, the feel
of the word
as it flushed from heart to finger,
slipped through the throat like a koi
in a corporate pond,
how you can say it sober
on a clear morning
and feel the murk sprawl
open the inner eye, the mouth
stunned with the church-musk
of syllables,
each cut and stroke
made holy with gush
and ephemera.
He or she must have felt the word
pierce the core of their lopsided
heart until it gleamed
in the gouged wood, must have
stood on the bench like the president
of all the strip-malls
of America, dressed in smoke
and aftershave, wanting to shout:
Praise the under-shimmer
and bisected vowel! The world
belongs to the panty-less
and unshaved.
God bless the subwoofer and carnival
ride-hitching, the jukebox
junkies, five-and-dime
store thieving laureate
of all things counterfeit
and candescent.
He or she must have
believed in a world where Pussy
is king, where all day Pussy
rides the subways of the heart
illuminating the anthems
scrawled there,
what is too precious
to be said out loud,
what is so beautiful it's a sin.