Pals Battallion

This is supposed to be sort of like a “defusal” of certain interesting lines of thought about the transient masculine body that appears in a lot of World War I poetry, but it didn’t turn out right.

——

garment district

cargo city

high-waist pants with

two-button closure

on the waist

girl

I can see

like your whole

dang bra boy the bold flavors of

mid-century coffee

salvaged daily

from strange sea

gosh it’s been years

since I a narrative

have looked over

a human body

or moved one signifier

in relation to another

concealed it

in plump luxury or riven it bare

or combed my hair

in another country, becoming

not male traverse but

coordinates discovered by flocks

of semi-autonomous bees, locusts, sand-plovers, cuckoos, herons, crickets, termites, coal-white pigeons, comb jellies, rock whales, pond orcs, all huddled under one warm mesoglea feeding on an apparently inexhaustible source of flavorful slime

onward comrades—

that’s one

potential thing

to be

or to walk in one place

in a circuit,

by mistake, or to walk

on purpose.

going into one store,

exiting another.

or your offices

look subterranean.

that’s a great look dude.