Past Corporate Love

It’s been a while.
I saw you undress in my mind.
Saw your figure so perfect from
distance.
Saw it imperfect in glances
underneath me,
with folds and moles.
Saw the light of the closet
cracked into the darkness of
the bedroom.
Disheveled, unorganized, and
human,
decorporatized for a moment,
like grapes on untended vines,
a vineyard
beyond the reach of the census.
Decorporatized when we lay
with each other
in fire and blood,

smashed
in fire and blood
together
in darkness
where we needed a reaching,
so we reached for the light
enclosed in our cell.

Our ancestors last human
in the restaurants
of the middle class
dreaming the way that
kept them sleeping.

The lights, the lights,
they’re golden around there,
dreaming the way that
kept them sleeping.

The Thing No Longer Howls

In the winter
we eat sharp white cheddar
and drink the sweet cream sherry
we bought at a rural supermarket
in Oklahoma on a roadtrip.
It’s what we do to get us through
the spurning of the sun.
The thing no longer howls as close
to us out in space.
We sit by white walls
and fireplace fires,
old books
and feel the fibers of sweaters
against our swollen skin.
It’s what we do to forget lovers
who spurned us
and learn to know each other,
learn to grow old,
to somehow have courage as
we become cowards.
The memories of autumn,
the smell of fallen leaves,
the emptying of the streets,
these things seem sweet to us
now.