for Emmy
Strangers aren’t evil.
If I could make the musicians naked, I would.
They all lie,
they all came from the same dank basement, watching themselves in a mirror.
The people I don’t know, I know them best.
I can see their intentions with a lightness in my eye.
You look humble only from behind and Hell is not a place where we can be alone.
Nakedness and money, both poles. We are tethered to them.
G E Costello
Now I am a freight, so I harbor tricks. They prate
and clatter as I pretend to listen. The water is green
and deep and the chunks of fat all float.
I squat behind the headboard in waiting:
I want every clod who’ll make this heart, a heart.
The empty room is now noxious and sour. So I’ll die,
be gloriously dead with The published,
have my meaning stolen and my face carved upward into the gut of a clock.
— G E Costello
Your greed has become dangerous.
No,
it was dangerous even before that.
It is concise and defeating
and looms over your yard like an oak.
All that you want turns to water and
the rain is getting too dense
to elude.
I covet, I covet, I covet.
You beg to entreat, but you’re getting too wet,
too long in the eyetooth,
and far away from this world.
G E Costello
Women ride the bus with their children. Or as nurses,
toting their duds and scalpel. We file on at each stop
woman child nurse man woman child man man nurse woman man child
Men ride the bus to meet the women.
They suspect we are translucent and supple.
They suspect we are peeled and yawning.
We see them peeking. You could hold the girth of the look
and guess the weight of it. It is full of expectancy and as round
as a baby’s arm.
We are just like you, there are things we still carry.
We play with the grit in our teeth.
We rub our feet to stay warm.
We build cages and fix things around the House.
We cease loving out of circumstance.
G. E. Costello
There were dogs all over the city.
I bolted an arrow to the air.
They barked at the sound of my metaphysical drilling.
Sometimes I try to yank my arrow towards me,
but mostly it chuckles and I walk by. Mostly
I pretend I wasn’t walking by for it.
The people we see in our dreams, they’re dreaming, too:
people on the bus, the little girl staring
at my tights, the
dogs, all of the people I’ve had sex with.
I slept with another woman, once.
We drank Hot Toddy and almost fell asleep in a movie.
The anticipation was unreal. I had always known.
Her lips were too soft. My hands, for the
life of them, couldn’t figure out what to do next.
I held them very still. I waited
for it to be over. I pretended to be asleep.
The next morning, I was found ill at foul
news of the crossword. Saturday is actually
the hardest. Sunday is just a big Thursday.
G. E. Costello
Our theories for loving steer us toward our partners.
Our fancy plans are left to fritter.
This socks the science into us as our partners size and weigh.
The boughs of excuses we built are too wide to haul.
Also, we are poor.
The car industry will die and our dates will no longer be able to drive us around.
We will be forced to cross on dark paths.
We will need to rendezvous while we eat.
We will suck the juice right out of the fruit.
G. E. Costello
I gifted my dog to the new you. ‘Clink’ and then a monster.
I can see my dainty little sister on her cigarette break at work, so I think thoughts that you can see: all of her fragile little limbs encased, gingerly smoking and thinking.
The different rooms of this house host different parties. I invite ants and their ant ghosts up to bed. The dog used to lick them up like treats. Little black bones on his tongue.
Since the dog moved out, I stopped moving. I sold all of my books and so now my room echoes like the hallways on an ant farm. When he would fall asleep, I would plan out what else to purge.
G. E. Costello
No soft letters, since
“acknowledgment:” it deepens
the wake you left.
