after—well after—Luis Buñuel’s 1929 film
I finger the stropped razor ready
to slice an eyeball
surrealistically enough
to turn my head in the clouds
cutting the moon and so who is blind?
she? he? me? eyes curbed after the bike collapses
and we are undressed for bed with ants in hand. Give her
a hand! I want to hold your hand;
the accidental dead want to hold breast and butt hold
on she tosses
she will serve no fault—
the undead eschew tennis
for a strongest man competition lugging
grand steinways, church, dead
dog. Dead? The undress awakens aroused by a dick
demanding he make a man or two of himself
to read to write to duel like Burr and Hamilton
in a New Jersey meadow from which a moth
on the New Jersey shore on which a melted watch
tells who lives who dies who tells your story
A native New Yorker, James Penha has lived for the past quarter-century in Indonesia. Nominated for Pushcart Prizes in fiction and poetry, his verse appears this year in Headcase: LGBTQ Writers & Artists on Mental Health and Wellness published by Oxford UP and Lovejets: queer male poets on 200 years of Walt Whitman from Squares and Rebels. His essay “It’s Been a Long Time Coming” was featured in The New York Times “Modern Love” column in April 2016. Penha edits The New Verse News, an online journal of current-events poetry. Twitter: @JamesPenha
The Zingara Project 