the aquarium

When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960)

Joan Fontaine in Rebecca (1940).

It is nice to be yours, to be 
a little less afraid of my head— 
heavy and always falling off 
my shoulders, a stone that 
rests on a smaller stone— 
and the other parts of me 
that fail to hold on their own.

like indoor soccer like Eduardo’s skinny boy abs like the raggedy jersey shirt tucked into his shorts like Monsanto, who created the artificial turf in the 60s like bristles of the phony grass tickling the back of my knees like learning, a decade after the fact, about Monsanto like Eduardo, appearing once again, inquiring about New York rent like deciding to live in Eduardo’s mouth like learning about gum disease on WebMD like vigorously flossing in the bath 11 days in a row like falling asleep at 11 like telling Eduardo you wish you were better friends in high school like telling everyone you wish you were better friends in high school like walking into a dispirited bar feeling dispirited like getting hard reading the Iliad like waiting for the guy in plaid and thick emerald frames to walk away from the podium at the front of the bar like hearing a girl with real yellow hair, real yellow, announce the next reader like hearing the reader’s poems being called “quietly devastating” by the girl with real yellow hair like wanting to put my hand on your hand, or in your pocket, or on your knee, but not knowing if I’m capable of it like observing everyone around you and wondering if they also feel slightly bloated like realizing it doesn’t matter (3x)

The first time I sent someone a picture of my penis I tried to leave my thighs out of it. They were covered in wet black hair and I felt a little like a dog, or, at the very least, like a person who sends nude photos. I turned off the faucet with my foot (I needed silence) and snapped away at my dick, at one point even shouting, “now pose for me” or something as devastating, as motivating. He said he really wanted it.

Jean-Paul Marat called it living. I have no way of knowing this for sure, but at some point he stopped bathing, which, more than anything, suggests a beginning, middle, and end to a ritual. If he no longer stepped in, and then half an hour later, out of a porcelain tub—one carried by tiny legs facing outward—and had simply made it his forever, what is it exactly that he was doing? Yes, he had a skin condition, one that damned him to the tub in the first place, but does that make it any less remarkable? He lived perpetually soaking. His friends, the frequent visitors, would remark on his fingers, which eventually stopped feeling like spoiled green grapes and instead of a material from the East. “Like silk,” one said. “Not like,” the other replied. I have no way of knowing this for sure, but when Charlotte Corday stabbed him in the chest, when she pierced his lung and an aorta, she grasped onto the side of the large basin with her left hand. She felt it cool against her fingers as she twisted the blade into the man she believed was ruining her country. This calmed her. Marat also felt calm as he died.

It is nice to be yours, to be 
a little less afraid of my head— 
heavy and always falling off 
my shoulders, a stone that 
rests on a smaller stone— 
and the other parts of me 
that fail to hold on their own.

It is nice to be yours, to be 
a little less afraid of my head— 
heavy and always falling off 
my shoulders, a stone that 
rests on a smaller stone— 
and the other parts of me 
that fail to hold on their own.