making weight

This stinky dummy

So down.

The red amateur headgear
provided by the nurse
does not fit their pin heads.
Like a cabbage patch
I am as thin as index.
I am deprived of body
fluids
and my fat thumbs
nudge at their empty breasts.

Their red headgear slips;

it protects their conjunctive crust-eyes
from misty hairsprays and other unspecified insecticides:
don’t bite it, suck it

she says.

This polytunnel, so sleek, contains weak kids
on their knees, premature and praying to stunted Strawberries.

Their sharp little knuckles chip at refrigerated udder-units.

Punch-bag mother, each teat
brittle and hook-hung in every corner
of the boxing ring –

Bar one.

Such a stumblebum-son, tooth-

picking offcuts because of a morbid commitment
to the endurance of perpetual punishments
and meat locker uppercuts.

Telepathic spaces creek between feeds.

In your absence

I nest
beneath a washing line of pegged-out gowns
and one apron,
flapping alone,
it appears to be panicking with the wind.

Blouse buttons begin to ping,

flinging gum-shield blood into the stadia.
sports fields come undone and linen baskets
become brimming buckets
filled with testicular cancer.

I look through her half of the bullet hole, then back into my own face-

book profile: digital trenches lined with the dead good
looking for an answer face-
down.

She made a long stretch of isolation scatter:

an excruciating online infatuation activated heaven, without touching
matter or having to inspect her hand-helds
for imperceptible germs: I accept

the fact that it is only Earth

whirling
with the worms.

We took standing counts
and turns
like human beings
suckling on
this stinky dummy

so down.

Then nothing
between me and the sun
but my southpaw crossing
Madison Square Garden,
unable to unload the shotgun
because of these beautiful boxing gloves,
these restrictive mittens, your images, they hurt me
so good: bridal, my idol:
my hanging horseshoe heavy weight champion of the dirt –

on wood.