Dear Lacuna, Dear Lard

By Paisley Rekdal
I’m here, one fat cherry
              blossom blooming like a clod,
 
one sad groat glazing, a needle puling thread,
              so what, so sue me. These days what else to do but leer
 
at any boy with just the right hairline. Hey! I say,
              That’s one tasty piece of nature. Tart Darkling,
 
if I could I’d gin, I’d bargain, I’d take a little troll
              this moolit night, let you radish me awhile,
 
let you gag and confound me. How much I’ve struggled
              with despicing you, always; your false poppets, relentless
 
distances. Yet plea-bargaining and lack of conversation
              continue to make me
 
your faithful indefile. I’m lonely. I’ve turned
              all rage to rag, all pratfalls fast to fatfalls for you,
 
My Farmer in the Dwell. So struggle, strife,
              so strew me, to bell with these clucking mediocrities,
 
these anxieties over such beings thirty, still smitten
              with this heaven never meant for, never heard from.
 
You’ve said we’re each pockmarked like a golf course
              with what can’t be said of us, bred in us,
 
isn’t our tasty piece of nature. But I tell you
              I’ve stars, I’ve true blue depths, have learned to use
 
the loo, the crew, the whole slough of pill-popping
              devices without you, your intelligent and pitiless graze.
 
Everyone knows love is just a euphemism
              for you’ve failed me anyway. So screw me.
 
Bartering Yam, regardless of want I’m nothing
              without scope, hope, nothing
 
without your possibility. So let’s laugh
              like the thieves we are together, the sieves:
 
you, my janus gate, my Sigmund Fraud,
              my crawling, crack-crazed street sprawled out,
 
revisible, spell-bound.
              Hello, joy. I’m thirsty. I’m Pasty Rectum.
 
In your absence I’ve learned to fill myself
              with starts. Here’s my paters. Here’s my blue.
 
I just wanted to write again and say
              how much I’ve failed you.

Copyright Credit: Paisley Rekdal, "Dear Lacuna, Dear Lard:" from The Invention of the Kaleidoscope. Copyright © 2007 by Paisley Rekdal. All rights are controlled by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh , PA 15260. Used by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.
Source: The Invention of the Kaleidoscope (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007)