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Welcome back to my favorite vegan! Fiona released her first new record (The Idler Wheel Is Wiser than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More than Ropes Will Ever Do)  in seven years yesterday. Cheers.

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“Lovely one,
With delicate hands and slender feet
Like a silver pony,
Walking, flower of the world,
Thus I see you,
Lovely one.”

                                    – Pablo Neruda

The Wake

I feel you like an animal

that robs the rain of its surprise

that knows of no fire in the sky

that says I love you after climax

like cement

like ferroconcrete

and the beasts that called your name before

only feasted

dully

never savoring their volant kill

an androcentric fantasy

and it becomes a mess

just blood that don’t discern

and we leave each other

like the first shock of opium or gray hair in the sink

and I’ll miss talking to you

in our kitchen

with the warmth of a nursery rhyme

most of all

(whether on Neruda’s Lovely One or Basquiat’s last collection after Warhol’s death at the Baghoomian or androgyny or how a dancer can dance without feet or cancer or hesitation at Aphrodisian curves or how to drink like Tennessee or aging or the little ghost, just the end of publishing)

my unsuccessful bluff, a SoHo snuff box

in a pile of other merchandise

I, at times, feel so bereaved and misplaced

but I know that there’s nothing that you need find  

and there’s no consolation necessary

just a sweet violation wrought

all you’ve ever needed was your delight and the misery of always being right

and the ability to walk away without apology

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