COAGULATES I HAVE BEEN

a guttering candle
on light. either a body
a house or an hour
(as surrogate for
his arrogance)
walking as it seemed
walking alive, alive
as it seemed and ready
to acquiesce to the terms
of cheeks and face
face in a staccato manner
after all, however after all
agreed, and then agreed with him
and then noticed he had
noticed he had his bag
his bag with him. and hit upon
a brilliant idea. thus it came to us
flung open, thrust at the nose or at his feet
shooting bolts to his head and face
and gloomy wedding hair
with a low voice a loud voice loud
student that you were
a quarter was made the quarter was made
and slapped on the hand
and the invisible head leaning
on an invisible hand, the most gifted
the world has ever seen
this strange and terrible career

FOR EVERY COLOR A COMPLEMENT

can be found as in a portrait
or in persons appearing in dreams
an orange drags with it—
the type of eye found in certain insects

or shared by two sisters
the persisting trace of experience
between tones or in this case a mosaic
of the so-called personal equation

literally “striving”
a half-way house to hallucination or attitude
plus sex instincts with some admired person
a release of currents from the heart where she comes

to understand it through imitating it
a disorder in which all things are round
and swelling at the end
of each semi-circle (in the case of a wave

a mere language disorder)
if lips could be enough, a roundish projecting
rounding the upper ends of influence or dampening
parts the final lines of regard in paradoxical wetness

the reducing of an amplitude of a vibrating body
of a deep sensibility as told only through the tissue
and self-regard in public
elicited by tapping on the tendon of the bone of attachment

*

put a circle around the picture
as one’s birth secreting incipient laughter
a cylinder covered in glazed paper
here an ambiguous figure

light fiber carrying a mirror
of manly touch and temperature
the impression of a statue
with a sense of smell

and two or more fingers
joined in a circle of thought
spelling relief and distance—
see the Elberfeld horses

carrying out complex and difficult arithmetics
tapping their feet at each nod
sensations formerly experienced
from the brief taste of an orange

GOD BOX

My bed is full of seeds
My bed is filled with bugs
The apple is full of spit
No seeds, no bugs
It shines in the face of my hog
The apple tastes like shit
My bed is full of fuck
My eyes, fuck
My eyes is full of puss
There might be shit in this bed
I have no more apples
My gut is populated with pig
And most likely parasites
The pig has an apple in its mouth
Slowly turning, it turns
Pinkly under my eye
The pig fills my nose
All night in bed I turn
That apple is totally fucked
Its one black pus-filled eye
I wake up with seeds all over
My eyes full of spit
My heart is a hog’s open mouth
In which the apple endlessly spins
In which the eye glazes over
My mouth belongs to the hog
I am mostly full of shit
Now the hogs are with the yolks
My yolks are full of pus
And with purpose
I fry an egg next to the meat
On the meat of my belly
The yolks disappear
Into the forever holes
My belly is full of fat and luck
My bed is full of lack, and bugs
Beneath the moon I walk
Ten thousand steps
In bleak starved circles until
I am starving again...

And are you that slap of bacon
Smeared across the evening lens
Skewered by my spit-fried eye?

Stella Corso is the author of the poetry collections Tantrum and Green Knife, both from Rescue Press, along with several chapbooks. Some new work can be found in online journals such as Apartment, Community Mausoleum, Mercury Firs, and At What Cost. She has a PhD in English & Literary Arts from the University of Denver and is currently a Visiting Instructor in the Jack Kerouac School at Naropa University.