poem: serotonin

her face is oil, gleaming over the plate — he takes long stock
of arbitrated beefstock, the tender cuffed
aioli shoots in glaze. less so,
her melting face puffy body, weird drain
of eyes down her face. I took her, new girl trembling
at auditions, when she was whole. the
hole began when I left for fields, she was creature
of career; nevermind the docile house against
the curve of the earth and the green-gray shutters.
nevermind the mull of the cows at noon, at dawn
when she is sheet-tousled asleep and her fair skin is
flank of animal under his hand. the country is the same breath
taken many times, new universalism against rite.
her audition lines going up, eternally,
into the sky with smoke and lights and all
the advertising glow; her breasts opened like a door
under my hands, mechanical-deer, overexposed and
not afraid, and the smoke in her went up —
her hole always wet, rotting slowly into the spring
where the cows lead him for reassurance. the low
brood of the earth has tucked-in,
same-old sky, a baby growing in your hands and yet —
little buddha — never growing at all. she did not
come to the fields; he sometimes dreamed
that she would. she melts down into restaurant plate;
it was a mistake to meet.

he wants to tell her the incantation, but it is
too late; still, under the heat-lights, he whispers it
and the food flattens to creator under
hot human breath: take up with the earth and
be with the earth, eat
the earth’s salt and lard
lay down in the earth’s grave.