Anthony Seidman

Saying Goodbye To Carthage

I must go now.

I snip this cord of acetylene,

I mount the horse of sulfur and hydrogen,

dispatch telegrams of frost-crusted roses to the desert,

sink in a goblet of sky, braid

hair of the wind, dabble

with explosives that taste like tamarind

and vomit the elasticity of milk &

pour the blue syrup of siesta.

I will pack my bags and wait at the platform

for the train that roars through the fireplace,

and sleep the long journey to

the attic where

lyres are tuned and all dogs happy.

My skein of blood unravels through another border.

Goodbye to the skins of wine I kissed,

goodbye to the hot grottos adrift in smoke,

goodbye to the women who never wrote me, the stars

that leapt under my skin, the shadows

rustling like silk when each door I opened

revealed breasts and cunt

turned into a pillar of iodine.

Once I felt the moon jump in my veins,

(I wrote a haiku about this but it got lost),

once I saw balloons released in a plaza

braided with the steam of meat and vendors,

once the water pipes clanked in the boarding house

while the city lit fireworks, and adulterers &

young lovers undressed in rooms jagged with crimson light,

(joy can easily fit in a bed with clean sheets).

But goodbye to your green and white taxi cabs,

I must depart.

Goodbye to your markets where trays

of meat stink the canned burn of menstruation, goodbye

to your produce of severed love, your beauty

like slit foreskins on a pushcart at noon, wasps churring,

goodbye to your recesses of marble & gold faucet bathrooms.

The desert gains another inch,

and there is no hay to harvest.  Hard skies portend

blue edge of nightmare will cut your dreams,

botch your autopsies,

and toss an appendix in the almoner’s cup.

Because I deny your watermelons and dust,

(I couldn’t care less),

I cut all strings never attached, and say

goodbye to your gymnasiums and diner,

I foreclose this scrap of light,

crumble your cathedral with a pinch of salt.

Not a peso will be

sweat on interest accrued.

(I must leave now).

The assassin is hungry. 

--

On De Kooning’s Woman I

Woman smeared in grease, brush-strokes of red,

Blue of uncooked meat, saffron, the black

of fingernails after an afternoon of changing car oil,

all scooped out and scribbled on canvas

edges.  He painted your skin all the luster

of lard, spat rouge only on your nose,

no nipples on your breasts, plastic bags

once filled with soda water now sucked dry.

But through that mess you smile—

five fangs chiseled dull as horse teeth—

you flaunt your overbite, saying:

what if you stick your tongue at me,

I’ll bite!  And your eyes, the mud basins

of the Mississippi, yet wide open, glaring

at the one who had the nerve to paint you.

Leather shining on a General’s

boots would not make you blink.

With a shopping bag in your right hand,

clothes iron in the sinister, you’re armed lethal,

ready to wrestle all of Manhattan’s taxis.  Fueled

with combustive mezcal, you look me

in the eye the instant before you open

the crystal door to Saks Fifth Avenue.

And you’re ready for a bargain, you’re thrilled

to live on credit.  Your feet, goat-hooves,

click in midair.