The Poetry Project

[older I get]

Wayne Koestenbaum

older I get, more serious I become
----------about wearing
----------makeup and wig.
caftan, too. always interested in a rub, kind sir:
----------love yr eyebrows.
----------admittedly, my pix
----------disguise age.
mix turquoise, king's blue, bluish purple: impose mix
----------on passive quinacridone
----------violet’s impersonality.
try to figure out how clearly delineated
----------“subject positions” find
----------angles of mutual
----------pleasurable engagement without
----------destroying each other.

Joan Rivers baking Xmas cookies seen sideways
----------through tunnel window's
----------mirror lake Simi-
----------lac® simulacrum.
“this administration is the worst thing to happen
----------to orange since
----------Agent Orange,” quips pundit.
every novel I love is fragile. red stars
----------on black duffel bag
----------triangulate with
----------Lynn Redgrave’s in-
----------dependent sources of self-
----------esteem, not harvested from Lear.
wrongly seeking sublimity in barn-roof gutter crevice.

lucent ceiling corrugations a dauphinois
----------potato when his Pompeii
----------gaze claims me, then disappears.
kouros-carved lips, stone lingerie, scandal
----------pudding: congregated
----------shames comprise a menu.
hives on my calves, awaiting Purim-Benadryl’s
----------alleviation: sob-collapse
----------throws ash on coffin
----------lowered: crowded town
----------car back from cemetery
----------to capers, cream cheese.

abstract expressionism is what happened at the hospital:
----------fools disputing climate
----------change, Tiffany
----------blue establishing shot’s
----------concentrated inattention.
“I’m glad you gave up the figure,” she said:
----------but I haven’t
----------stopped pursuing nudes.
to be the dread golem, aloof in Prague, boning
----------up on feuilletonisme,
----------Eton pea-coat toggles
----------unclasping gelt-Jocasta.

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