three poems

BRETT SHAW

And like any animal wanting touch and then wanting

To move, imperceptibly, away, at first, wanting
To end this sense of other hands becoming our own
Skin, this creeping, the sinking; feeling tests within
The body we never quite quiet, incomprehensible, what
We call instinct’s unthinking, though each avoidance
Beckons—branching root; to be pushes down, but don’t
These addictions embody? curling away the way
We do when sleeping, little wood shaving, little whittling,
Not cut, but deftness pulled through depths the eye sets
For blade well ahead of its edge, the hand flowing in-
To gaps, that space between two bodies we only reach
Instants across; you touched my cheek and, like a tree
The wind, I leaned into your warm palm, then away,
I didn’t know why; was this hoping whether you’d
Follow? the tamed thing we knew neither of us was—

we wish to touch the surface we wish

the surface to be smooth or what we’ve wished for found design
departments’ predilections already given eye’s hand fetishizing distress
as denim’s raw wound we smoothed into retinal displays which flatter the mating
of bower birds shelved on warehouse screens which watch back tick away reflect the stars’ dead lasting the landfills growing longer than chemical half-lives
i’ve learned more about living clearing shed hair from drains this my vanity’s reinvention of stresses to which we’ll never speak carrying a tuneless hum electrifying scrolls that used to age like us was it a comfort once touching
what felt like our own worried lips chapped with biting we grow supple
wanting to feel flattered in ever-reflective pools of run-off some poor animals
put lip to in hope of curing their thirst

I Arrive at Lugubrious, Searching for the Word Sebaceous

Weak moments of flesh—

pressing until oil stains
each nail. Making myself

a tactile mechanism of my own curious, I

keep pressing until blood, until my skin

is mountainous—
making each terror,

 every fossil
my own! A real

 gusherveincavity
to drilldrilldrill— These ideas

 drain along the edge of my jaw. Slugs’

 lush movements fill my dreams— I grow

 sad when people speak
of salting the earth, understanding

 only one side of a feeling
we continue naming protection.