from Jorge: Sangre del Mar

Joseph Mains and Donald Dunbar

Jorge was an animal who fell in love with air.
Jorge, an aspiring ricochet endlessly in the upper limits of atmosphere
breathe, said Jorge to himself. Jorge said mimetically in his interior.
All his souls and his bones and cells began to develop holes, oh Jorge...

*

Jorge was in walgreens and stuffed a bobblehead Jorge inside his toolkit.
Inside his backpack and inside his shirt, Jorge was a masterpiece
hungry for his nighttime meds and wishing the best to all himself.
All the best civilizations toiled in misery for Jorge, berry-eater.

*

Justices simple, Jorge says, justices english
and turns a colorblind face cityscape-blue.
I’m in love with my face on every child, my womb of blood and ricepaper
     fueling the hemisphere.
The juice of lemon yields a nose, a look, a justice so divine only english could
     render its glory.

*

It’s acceptance Jorge wasn’t and a rind of blood orange in the hymen tea
     makes Jorge happy it’s how
equally I think of you turning flowers on their stem, she panders in german.
The stamen sunk full fathom; we are all beautiful and blonde and liberal and kind
     she in a foreign tongue speaks
kissing the kool-ade, ich dich eine Jorge auch, each.

*

There’s a forest in Jorge, a forest of pines buildings and shoots of
     pleasure growing & kool-ade
boiling, meat boiling, muttering je ne se etceteras in spanish in Jorge a forest
a forest just asking for cowboys & disease & gat-rot & prayer. Poor Jorge,
berry-eater, misses his target, guts his only begotten son.

*

My bed meets you in a similar way that I do—when I can’t have my eyelids I have
the gray of truth, the security of relapse, the unwound testicle as floss to the gods
and my prayer thru the visualizer. It sounds more hopeful than it is, seeing
     light as meat
laid sweet in bedsheets. In the morning all that’s wet will burn we’ll watch
     from inside.

*

Drying brine near basqueland, the yellowest capsules are found by Jorge
lacking, sickly and so seafood, so mollusk Jorge
removes his kit, screws on a needle, injects his blood into breakfast egg yolks
and the screaming seems, for a meal, only inside himself.

Joseph Mains is an American poet living in Portland, Ore., where he co-curates the reading series Bad Blood and is a founding member of Milk/Shop.

Donald Dunbar lives in Portland, Oregon, and runs the reading series If Not For Kidnap. His book Eyelid Lick won the 2012 Fence Modern Poets Series prize and will be out in the fall.