Hannah Jewett’s mouth
is cold and milky white
like a sculpture of 
the Virgin Mary
 
She is housesitting
for a gay couple
she has never met
and welcomes us in
to a dinner party of all
androgynous men
 
We eat couscous and olives
and pose with a blow-up
plastic swan
 
It’s very Roman 
before the collapse
of civilization
 
I find my voice in the wine
and the Top 40 hits,
just like the rest of my generation
but elegantly in a penthouse loft
on Bowery
 
Thank god for Xanax
and dim lighting
so I don’t have to see myself illuminated
 
but can feel illuminated
in this circle,
in this drink,
in this oyster,
in this Travis Scott song
 
Don’t open up that window
Don’t you let out that antidote

Granite on granite
Leather straps 
on the feather bed
chemical tapestry 
gathering dust
 
On Facebook
Carl Jung tells me
to become the alchemist 
of my own destiny
 
Yes, OK, I’m wearing
Yves Saint Laurent’s 

Cinema --

Vanilla, spicy, womanly 
and yet
 
I’m in dirty New Balance sneakers
 
*

Genesis P-Orridge carries around
a tiny doll of her dead wife
Lady Jaye on her neck
-- their neck --
containing her ashes
 
They are sick from
their plastic surgery
 
but they have the full lips
and large breasts
of Lady Jaye for comfort
in this physical world
 
*

From the leather couch
the audible life stream
tells me ancient secrets 
of dying while living
 
as I skim through 
my friends’ existential crises
and the Us Weekly comment board
 
Denise consoles Bobby Brown
Angela shames Bobby Brown
 
over the death of
his daughter
found unconscious in a bathtub
 
People are mind sick these days 
Denise writes
 
In heaven with her mother 
Julia writes
 
Meditate under the shadow 
of a blooming magnolia tree
 
No magnolia tree?
 
Meditate under the shadow of a building,
 
pretending
 
*

I want to have sex in the Dawn 
Ballroom of Minecraft,
unperturbed by the worry
of surviving

Near the floating candelabra
Inside the protective walls of steel

What is lovely never dies

Pink sky 
and a floor in the calming 
aqua blue tile
that doubles as a reflecting pool

I don’t know what my face
looks like but

my son’s name is Maverick
and he is dust 
on the sides of your office cubicle
 
I’d like to have birthed him here
in the Dawn Ballroom