Rauschenberg

Asleep, your body’s composed

of four elements, a magnetic field

its finishing stillness. It shifts, moved

by inkling sun. You roll over, eyes closed.

Your mouth is dry. A waking breath

has your voice inside it,

or some knowable substance.

The room is all mute matter—

dried grass, pressed tin,

ever-sentient Erection.

What to attend to first?

Need: oil and acrylic with fork

and corkscrew on canvas.

Interior: oil, pencil, paper, hair,

note on the wall,

Find Boy Food—

You feel soft in the center, your name

hinged, crossing you like the water

that keeps the Lone Star State

away from Mexico, Mexico

with its soft x.

In New York your room is full of things

so common they’ve lost their names.

From your bed, you hallucinate

a harmony in these surroundings,

you, a character in a cartoon

about starvation, who sees his best friend

as a steaming ham hock.

But you’re your own best friend. 

There’s nothing you touch more

than your own bones.

You roll over in your

Grave: silkscreen and body tracings

on mattress fragment.

Bed: Oil and pencil on pillow, quilt and sheets.

Between you, me and the fencepost:

Is your gal a Western gal?

Tell all about her saddle,

her pale suede palms.

Does she polish them with tack and bridle?

Can she find her way to the cattle tank

in the dark of a moonless midnight?

When she gets there, does she drink the water,

brown as tea and full of twitchers?

Is your gal a flaming wagon wheel?

A horseshoe hung on a homestead door?

Does she season the soup with dust

from a rusty harmonica?

Can she whittle and whistle at once?

Does she wear a belt of braided jerky?

Does she ever brush her hair?

What key’s her ukulele tuned to?

Do petticoats push her skirt

high into the air?