Issue 18
Searching my purse of apologies, I make up bright, red, lips.
I find forgiveness in painting your body. The brush? My lips.
The reason the monk finds tranquility inside the sacred
temple, is the same reason I seek when I’m inside her lips.
The vacationing monk finds the elixir of life a simple recipe:
2 parts tequila, 1 part lime, 1 part Cointreau, 2 parted lips.
A fish in the lake of desire, you catch on another man’s line.
Was it his lure, or giant rod, that helped set hook to your lips?
I hear the fuse of lipstick more clearly when lit with apology,
and the explosion its red gloss makes on my face, from lips.
I seek enlightenment of The Buddha, and meditate on the
erection of serenity. Quiet is the temple, even more her lips.
Emilio, the fashionista, is self-obsessed, wears his mirrors.
Everywhere his gaze lands, he finds the prints of his lips.
Why marry? I couldn’t live without the sound of her voice.
Why divorce? I couldn’t live with the sound of her voice.
They are so primal. They have their own opinions to feed,
their own stomachs, their own caves to echo their egos. Voices.
It’s what matters most that easily separates: the glare from the
diamond, eyebrows from the pencil, the ‘voice’ from the voice.
I see more clearly, the ice sculptures, as they adorn the spaces
of our home. And what freezes us to our footsteps, her voice.
A mood swing is the atmospheric pressure that builds up in a
girl’s head, and makes a tornado of the room with her voice.
The light left on in the bathroom turned on more than the light.
It lit the annoyance in the voice. And so we call it ‘the voice’.
Preferring his beauty over writing, being smothered by breasts,
or when God no longer listens, then Emilio has lost his voice.
A virgin peels away at innocence, a first kiss adorns a lake.
Then night tucks away the clothes, a virgin discovers the lake.
Try to separate: the big fist from the little lady, the gummy
Buddha from the top of your mouth, the mirror from the lake.
Lovers kiss, mouthing for love, like fish straining for oxygen
in the red water. A thousand gaping hearts absorb the lake.
I hear there are many women in the sea. I am a bachelor of
several years, because I have always dropped line in a lake.
There are so many things I’d rather do, than eat another bowl
of your asparagus soup. How many bowls of water in a lake?
Fishing for inspiration, I reel in the reflection of the alder tree,
and its overhanging branches that weave a net of the lake.
Emilio studies hard the lessons of the Buddha. In a world of
suffering and violence, he holds himself in, becomes the lake.