Andrew Leland

Spit in the Lock

and the knob turns. I don’t have a biological son, I have a dog.
He notices nothing. A biological emergency
isn’t as fun as a spiritual one. A capon of regret
is preferable to a soupçon of desire. A plate
of brown rice with seasoned beans, steamed veggies, and a stainless cup of tahini sauce.
This is the shampoo I use to wash my hair a-mornings.
This is the computer I use to write games that I sell
for money to buy yeast for my bread.

How do you make yeast at home?
Float into your sheep’s warren mooningly, morningly, warmingly,
balls bound tight
in the gauzy ballet dancer’s big bundled package.
Fill their troughs with hämmertaschen and bloat.
Computers that working poets use,
not like yours. A swelling breast
at the malls of New Jersey completes the final steps required
to become official “Sister Malls” to the malls of Mérida.
A soupçon of desire goes on sale there.

I like my garbage adulterated. Try,
but don’t try so hard
that you resemble one of those fractally self-satisfied Berkeley undergrads standing indoors
at graduation in a dark auditorium standing in a permanent California autumn,
fluent and white in Spanish, tenth in their families to graduate,
minds ringing with recent theses, a chorus onstage,
genitals scrubbed and bundled in affordable underwear.
Dust still caked on the numbed nubs where their tonsils hung.
The memory’s ice tray is reasonably cluttered,
well organized and coated
with an agreeable amount of fuzz,
a productive mold like penicillin
grown over the whole shebang.

Some of them are vegan,
others have bellies full of chicken and cheese.
Congratulations! Sam puts his tongue in Sarah’s
mouth and his hands grab her bottom and her tongue
goes into his mouth and her eyes
have never been open. I want her
to grab his wang through his gown
but she won’t. Just kissing, her
hair tied behind her head, her
belly full of couscous and squash.

Andrew Leland is reading Tres Tristes Tigres.