Mack
Gregg
opus incertum
open faucus quick work
of the House’s brawling
tesserae fashion a captive a sudden ash a drunken panorama how much lapel how much studded delirium regulates the immense the delta polemic of porphyry the crypto under current axial flow down avenues of the dead parse a stony godhead alone
what we like lately defer even before the flood the way of the locked door to go stone
silk scroll down the flesh map the music omicron lost til iota
of a woman of a hue of crimson antiquity in westernwear thoroughly absolute for your buried-under-centuries desuetude destined Bible fundamentals dressage hobbles the suede of modern by the video’s surfeit whomst let Catherine crush fruit plain stone girl already promised satin
apricots to
consume under her too-much rot soon tourmaline stained too-much surface old matter
her inhale to kiss her moon over her god in season her capture to render the frieze burn trauma water moist undercurrent of photograph cycle in heated effluvia
beast-body the remnants blushing treasured the second ghosted is
not sex
in the bleeding periphery account for the doe cum the bit lip the latest mode of Sappho latinate suture wolf a flagrant construction wound of Aphrodite sing of
it
under equitable plaza, five floors under
there is a flower store. looks more like a
plant store, you observe
but very nice plants, aren’t they
clamoring, artificial
the last time anyone here saw
the actual sun
i was still having sex
i’m trying to pay for parking
can’t recall how a credit card works
all nerves, little pathways
i don’t understand
this is a marvel, like every marvel, devoted
to scientology
and banking; who’s buying
subterranean orchids anyway
and naturally, it’s all over
my face:
earthquake you
structure me
questions
of aesthetics
collapse in
with the whimper
of a new-minted
twink
willing to flee
dear vesuvius
do we
outlive our selves
((for Grace))
Oakland, Lunar New Year
for S
On the other side of the wall
You cum again
Papering the floor
With pink leavings
Of firecrackers, bodies bloomed
Into pure sound
Spattering the night
Oil across a hot pan
Obliterating into
Morning’s faint
Saltpeter and coal scent
To spangle my nausea
To embroider
The thorny wound
The orange tree makes
A cinema of the
Sky-blue wall beside
My sick bed
By the shadow
Of some far-off lamp
It matters that you are here
Notching the bedpost
With your lipstick
A loud shade and
Unsubtle, this chaos
Where the hummingbirds
Go to rest. Your tonic joy
Skims
for AZP
Poem as semisheer bodysuit. Flower as
Reference to myth dilating regular old
Fuckups into catastrophic magic
How you manage
To hate every one you once loved
We, kin, accustomed to being
Stitched to life by the soles of our feet, by the hairline
Some place in between
Shitting with the door open
And romancing you from another state
That little crack where love is
They put the hole in the crotch so you can
Gaze at the pretty surface or go down
The elevator of mirrors
To the apartment
Below, pubic carpet and waves of glass
Where you never actually arrive
Torn canvas of your skin in hand
Say let me die, then staunch the wound
With little pink globs of paint; snuff out his figment
Erase genitalia, with semi-
Opaque pearlescent rearrangements of
The he-man grammar
The boys think
Reading a book is reading the title
They run their fingers up your spine, I feel it
They put on jackets all at once
All at once step out to feed the livestock,
And you, naked under hay; prone thing
to be hidden away, baby lamb, afterbirth
Across the unswept slat. And the dog digs up
The field bones: mostly cow,
Then goat, pig, mystery. Summers a
Heifer’d die in the woods, giving the valley
The gift of her slow decay, decay the hills
Held in like a terrible secret.
Stranger delirious and sleeping
Under the banana tree, worried
He was a corpse, dog who wouldn’t go away
Even when we hosed him down
The farmers and the strays
Were different, broken different. Who was it
Hollered for mommy, scaring off the ghost
Leaving the green slime of tea in the unwashed
Sink. Who was it threw stones. Around
The bonfire who’d duke it out for alpha
Circling, heaving rotted planks of fence & cut limbs
Who learned to hold your own, not by doing, but
By watching, silent girl in the flickering
Shadow, thinking, I might choose
A creek or a river over my own body.
Mack Gregg currently gardens on Cahuilla land. Their work can be found in Stone of Madness Press, Bureau of Complaint, Moist Poetry Journal, and b l u s h lit