Now the love poems that aren’t about being devoured
Are about being executed.
One can see the naturalness
Of the line, how it extends, how it was thought
Into the holes of the future by an unruly wish
Under pressure.

Which is to say: You do not want
To share a language, lover.
You want to do something.
You want to constitute an enemy.
You want to organize. You want
To learn. You want to work.

This punctured tire, the chairs
Falling apart, the de-articulated toys around us.
The fixable is here, now, slow, waiting,
Violent and curled
On the tongue of an impossible language.
And when you kiss me you say see

We don’t need it. We don’t need any of it. Not
This tired love, not someone else’s future.
Not another poem about the lover’s body, however
Bloused in coastal light or tenderly parted
Into new forms. The songs that matter never stay written
Down when there are plantations to burn—