Rosebud Ben-Oni

So I turn you into a horse but you are jealous of that horse.

& so you've chosen to die.

Or rather: the horse will not
not be skinned. There. {There.} Feel better. Next year
I'll teach you to swim & you'll carry us north
for wintertime.

So I turn you into
a horse, a water horse, with sealskin & steely
fins that never tire, but still you are jealous
of some distant & parched mire
wanting to bury me
in a rusted flask.

Wanting all my bare skin
skunned in wineflesh.

As proof

of first horse-&-human debt,
unborn seed
far away from smokeless winter
chimney & singed
evergreen

kickedstraight

to the curb.

& even if we'd return
{minutes} before the world's end, still

I'd turn you into a horse who would die
dying for the music.

Underneath ivory
tabernacle, under holy child.

& still you lament the tusk
warped into wings,

the horns hammered for organ keys.

& now you're a songless thing tearing through
the middle of this horse, who(m) if I don't finish,
will be left swimming
in loose folds of ocean
for eternity

—so I turn you into a horse

& you say the ice is not a place for sacrifice.

So I turn you into {a horse} & you say: turn me

into a drop of rain & I swear by the skun

of our sins you& I

will never see land again.
...

Somewhere in kentucky she went for kicks
spiked polka-dot mint
julep grade 1 stakes white-gloved
clubhouse how-you-do-sees

until all the horses broke their legs & for all the horses my ex

join the seine-et-oise
thoroughbred liberation front & she

crashed all the bentleys & it was I who bled

in derby countryside where horses
die in japanese
slaughterhouses
defrocked
of rose blanket & blue ribbon

& how very they went
in the kind of darkness knowing
only my old
kentucky

home no longer a run for the roses it's besieged
with cannibals & thieves
& only millionaires row sings

a hero is a horse without a heart that never aches

for lovers who cross them
one too many times

when we kill one horse all of them die
waiting
long after kentucky & she


slips
white gloves on my hands
bent from carrying her on nyc streets
jammed
the wrong way in every direction

how merry are we

how merry

how bright-shine beaming no longer weeping
& she bears my head to the heat
& I let it all go
& bet my last hat & home
& how
& how very are we
& it changes everything
...

After BIGBANG's "Fantastic Baby"

Matarose never comes home
She's hungry like a wolf
She's rosa de mota in lacroix
all the girls hail on queens boulevard
All the views she's killed
in the name of iman
& yasmin le bon
Mata's quite meta
Mata means kill
Rose a curve
from the real meat of it all
She's part my little pony
into bronies she has loved & loved not
by astro-pony
compatibility chart
She's the queerest part of me
What's left after the clubs close
& has yet to go
home she never goes when
she writes I always write
in bed just woofed down
a 3 musketeers mata's on
a mission which is to say I'm
my most queer my most mata-

rose when she
& I don't need all the girls
in the yard

don't need

all the girls in the yard
by which I mean
the one

who's not the one whose blocked
texts & torn up wish you wells
flicker still That riddle
get you killed kind
of a woman for whom
matarose almost cut off a foot
Went to the end of twobuck
ghosting rails
My man is a little afraid
of mata he accepts her tho
Lets her come & go
because I stay I am always
with him because mata
just wants every 7 train
to dissolve into g-dragon
sound wants you to howl

boom mata mata

boom mata mata

wow

g-mata dragonrose

The most pony of them all



g-mata 7 dragontrainrose

Don't wait up

Never last stop never comes

boom mata mata

boom mata mata home
...

Aba says in a blizzard, fill the bathtub.
With firewood. Aba says a leaky roof

is a blessing. Provided
the bucket. To melt

snow. With fire. We gather.
All the trees in Queens. Shake

& shiver. My axe
cannot approximate.

My axe is a plastic bottle. Filled with club

soda. I wonder
when it unfreezes,

will it explode. Aba says: Light
of my eyes,

where are you getting your science.

I no longer know. I used to believe
in string theory. But the field

breaks. Too many. Rules.

& you can't quantify nor quantum
even a drop of rain—everything's just

too damn big. For models that would prove. The rules. Tried & still
not true. The roof is always leaking. The bathtub is a mass

grave of trees. Aba says go outside
before it's too late. But I have. I've seen.

In a public bathroom I hide
with many other women

from a storm. The leaky roof
fills with cinders & once more.

A dead bird. One of us screams.
They all scream. When I pick him

up off the slimy floor. Pick
the maggots from his body.

Soon. I have the bathroom. To myself.
In public. I have an entire sanctuary.

Of sorts. To mourn. When I bring the dead
home. Aba tears at his clothes & covers

the mirrors. Won't let me burn
the body. Says even birds died

in the Shoah's desperate, hungry hands.
Days before the bodies were turned

to ash. Perhaps this bird too descends
from a lone survivor. We cry for

his mother. We cry for my grandmother.
Free up the bathtub & flood our home.

With rainwater. Float
a burning, empty pyre.

I say: Aba, this isn't what we do
either. Aba says: It's too late

to go outside. Which I do. I try.
I dig & dig.

For dirt, defying
my father.

I lose
the feeling

in my hands. In snow
that doesn't quite stick

to the ground. Night falls
& his body stays warm

under my layers
drenched. From

sleet & sweat.
I won't give

in. Birds gather around me. Dark lights
against blue cement. They wait it out.

They stay perfectly still.
Right out in the open.
...

For Carolina Ebeid
We enrolled at barbizon
Knowing full well
We'd never look like
What was promised
Cue carol of the bells
Cue a demo on the casio
And the security of two-way
Escalators setting the speed
Those early mornings
In our mall school
The store's silver grills
Some mannequins left
Half-clothed
We'd taunt them
With our imagined summers
In london paris rome
We weren't please and thank you
Walking with books on our heads
No we were going to devastate
Greek shipping heirs
At every port of call

Yet when our bus broke down
And we trudged the shoulder
Of highways
Single file
Dodging cigarette butt and horn
We shook off those mornings
Studied
Their defenseless
Indifference
The blinding surface
The quality of electric
Without being alive
We knew that there
In only hot pants
The ideal form
Plastic
Most would take a bullet for


While at 16
We were already trash-talking
Our prayers never went beyond
The second floor
Light-years away
From the last word
That distant somewhere
Where a boat loses course
The north star forsaking
Its name to another
...