A FAT VENUS IS QUICK
The venus of bread seeps into my daylong sleep:
Her name is kissed to the lobes of my ears,
but my eyes do not see her.
The spiral staircase lays itself
stone by gnawed stone,
cannibal gargoyles belching out
a gruel of stonemasons,
and it erupts through my second floor balcony
like a continent.
The venus of bread stirs me in my daylong sleep,
and kneads, endlessly kneads
my buttocks and inner thighs.
The faceless ones step in slow procession
bearing her totems:
Men baked of sourdough,
abstract homunculi, their tribal sigils slashed
with my bakery scalpel,
the kerfed crosshatch ridges toasted
to just the right shade of brown.
The venus of bread pulls and pushes my hot drowse
on the couch, working,
working the leaven.
I sleepwalk through a dark cave full of televisions
weeping apocalypses,
following snaking turns
until I find myself in a floodlit automat.
The venus of bread sends komodo woman to my side.
The gnat sweat of sex dances
about our heads.
We drop coins in slots and bring food,
still in its cellophane, to a white formica table.
We fuck on top.
Komodo woman is as small as a child, my cock hardly fits.
But I don’t worry about delicacy—
Her thighs scissor my sides like shark bite,
her small pointed breasts nip at my chest through her smock,
and I stroke with my opposed wishbones
the ivory skin smooth as silk or vellum,
wanting to finger the shoals of black opals
sliding just under the translucent epidermal sheath.
The venus of bread slices into my daylong sleep,
coming to our table
at the end of the farmer’s breakfast counter
in Purcell, Oklahoma.
Stern grandmother waitress,
she stands colossal in starched white linen
and splashes us with morning light.
She clears the plates
from under thighs, hips, and shoulders.
Sated, komodo woman and I slide off one side
of the tabletop,
into the padded booth.
Our waitress nods her gruff approval
as if we had eaten our sausage, biscuits and gravy
with good appetites.
But I am so hungry suddenly I want to take a bite
out of her broad white rump
I spot the one unbroken biscuit
riding a starred splash of gravy—
I grab and stuff my mouth
full of quick bread.
