His face the rock cliff
His face the rock cliff a place of views his face a shelter a barn a loyal brother full of lips his face in aging a mirror and a protest his son not yet amplified his fingers on the keys in the carvings a boy a lawn a dog in the carvings a house his hand in the dark his one pale cheek
An empty vessel of dreams so vivid a moment ago now driven underground his pale hand cradled in a chair with the tides lists into blue folders scattered books and long-dried figs rips at the crust of sour bodies and ruminant hairs protected from the rising waters by a garden in the backyard perhaps a pool a solid yellow couch a green weather
A whole trunk of prayer flings across the air a green hush of his a simmer of trains he steps from the road onto a berm and into the grass packed up and furnished out of the way in the wash and the winter of a red glossy car the musk of corners the copper creek the frogs he rides a motorcade through a long squeeze of tar to a tiny mansion made out of trust and quilts and gently patterned sweaters
Gently patterned in the mirror beneath a blue and velvet gown where blood still falls from his cunt a gown so long he must watch how he walks in his patent leather shoes he fears he will win drunk in a tight red dress unformed and bare-assed on a New York night passing out and coming to in a restaurant walking the city streets barefoot or is it his sister’s wedding or is it yesterday a shawl draped across his shoulders not a boy not an elf not that girl at the piano not that man still too skeletal to shout he walks naked in wonder
Shaking in the coffee shop naked with the grinding of beans finger on the phone a boy across the table his linen shirt and his hat in the sun perhaps a relative from the hills of Transylvania a skinny man full of future full of legs and full of hearts
It’s a well goddamn it a well full of legs a long shaft into a world under this world he is submerged no sides to stand on or grip he kicks desperately looking for a place to rest he sinks in the narrow dark a disk of light high above the last he sees of an earthly day
An arm hits the paper a page of earth without lines or coherence just the tap the tap a typewriter on the back of a camel drives him from the mud onto a carpet to the large-sized boy-sized man the thickness of him before the west the rock of him turned into a deadly mass he stands with a rifle arms flailing against a house of sudden men a house of institutions a house of god
He chooses a little cube of air beneath a house of dirt where the taste of dirt where the smell of dirt and wormy gas where the grit of dirt sails into his skin where the dirt of puss and the dirt of hands and the dirt of barter and the dirt that enters through the dirt of pale moles the daily dirt lying in caves the ghost of dirt the turning of bats in barns and then the clouds and the dust that is left in the clouds
Samuel Ace is the author of three collections of poetry: Normal Sex, Home in three days. Don’t wash., and most recently Stealth, with poet Maureen Seaton. He is also a photographer and sound artist and is a two-time finalist for a Lambda Literary Award in poetry, winner of the Astraea Lesbian Writer’s Fund Prize in poetry, the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for fiction, and the Firecracker Alternative Book Award in poetry. A recent finalist for the National Poetry Series, his work has been widely anthologized and has appeared in or is forthcoming fromAufgabe, Fence, The Atlas Review, Black Clock, Mandorla, Versal, The Collagist, Troubling the Line: Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics, Best American Experimental Poetry 2016, and many other publications. www.samuelace.com