Ruth Pastine. Sublime Terror 2, Yellow 1, 2019, Oil on canvas beveled panel, 45 x 24 x 3 in. (114.3 x 61 x 7 cm.) Courtesy of the artist.
TRUMP
I really needed to pee but
we had fucked that
afternoon & my hips were
still so sore
that I didn’t want to
get out of the car
so I squatted down
right over there
beside those big
garbage bins
The pee came out
so fast that
even though
I had pulled my under-
pants down to my
ankles, they ended up
totally soaked. Sometimes that
happens. Unless you have a
dick, it’s really hard to pee outside
They were totally soaked
through &
I should have
tossed them, but then
I suddenly had this weird
idea that if I
put them back on, I
would somehow become a
truer version of myself
That was when I saw her
She was sitting
all alone in the front
seat of her car w/
the door open
impossibly wide & what was
easily
the biggest plastic bottle I’d ever seen
propped up
on the seat next to her &
I know I shouldn’t
say this out loud
I mean, post-Trump
& everything, but
for some reason she kept
touching it, rubbing it
as though it were a small
animal, or a baby or
some very very private part of herself
I couldn’t tell if
she realized it
or not but
her shoes were there on the
ROOF of the car
Which, it goes with-
out saying,
was the whole of the 20th century
1:22am: I was having the strangest dream just now. A bunch
of dogs at a
farmer’s market wouldn’t stop barking at me
1:23am: And just when I was needing something to masturbate to
STACKED
1.
Don’t worry. I got here early
cleaned all the cum
off the toilet seat
Wiped down the sink
and walls. Piled
the dirty towels
as neatly as I could
out in the hallway
Mirror-sand
Nipple-rivets
2.
I know it still stinks, but
it’s not me. It’s this
damn HEAT
coming up from the toilet
3.
Which, I am sure, Ashbery would have
agreed,
is a clear sign that a poem is going
to be confessional
4.
If you could stop fiddling with my on/
off button for even a minute
5.
When I was down in the lobby, trying to find the WIFI
password, the front desk picked up the phone & screamed
No. 341 is not ready, & fuck any woman who path-
ologizes her own horniess
6.
Which is to say, the body is, in fact, something
more than a series of images
7.
No. Wait. Don’t unwrap the condom yet
I’m just now starting to get a little herbaceous
8.
& all of these photos of my crotch I have STACKED
& waiting for you
9.
What is that on your phone? Porn or solitaire?
Which my phone autocorrects to speculum
10.
No. Pay attention. You tear it open right here
11.
& then you’ll see what I mean. This condom is not
an ordinary condom
it’s actually a very small opening into language
11.
The front desk comes up. Shows me a poem she wrote
A series of carefully crafted couplets comparing the
sunset to & the immensity of your scrotum
12.
Check-out is at 11. I’ll be sure to give you
the parking tag when we leave. Just keep it in your trunk
so your wife doesn’t see it
13.
Final Screen Shot of the DAY:
Yesterday was no different. At exactly 3, all of the JACKS
from here to Redwood City moved forward in
single file out to the ice machines
The maid agreed w/ me that it wasn’t sexual at all
14.
The last Turkish 747 finally found its crew & is now headed
straight EAST
First plane from Paris landed on Runway Three 45 min ago
15.
The manager made me promise to remind you that last night they
finally took your advice & drained the swimming
pool & now
it
is
full of
horses
CLEVELAND
Elaine called
she had that same dream
again
The one where we are
driving from Santa
Rosa to Bakers-
field in that old Peugeot
Running the entire length
of 101 South is a huge under-
ground river
You can enter it & feed
I saw the video you sent but
How are you going to be able to get off
just by rubbing it like that
The plane has taken on water
(they say it might be amniotic)
& has been diverted to Cleveland
I’ve spent the last
hour analyzing your
text from the morning
I know you speak both
French & English but
that’s not going to help us
If I were to apply a bit of
pressure right here
a half inch above the clitoris
If I were as much of a woman as
the plastic seat of this chair
If I could finally find a way to
write in the first person
I could cum inside myself
I am the only one
in this entire Terminal
who’s writing a poem
I must be a real slut
1:08am: Sorry. No. Keep talking
I swear
I wasn’t falling
asleep. I was
ovU-
lating a little bit just then
MASTIC
Think of this as the Prologue
I’m in the middle of downtown
San Carlos & can’t
for the life of me recognize
anything other than maybe my legs
Think of this as Act One
I finally find the car &
crawl into the backseat
Assume a spot low to the ground
In the Bay Area
you have to learn how to
stay LOW
like a bird or a turnip
or something
in your mouth that is
way too green
DESIRE FLAKES
That man over there. The
one w/the short legs
He can’t see me, but I
can see him
One arm hanging
out the window for no
legitimate reason
Face diamond-
rimmed (If I found any
of this even
the slightest bit arousing
my ovaries
would be bursting by now)
Think of this as Act Two
Imagine me naked in
this moment
so I can be alive (but don’t
worry
by alive, I only
mean percolating)
Think of this as Act Three
Now, as you might have predicted
both of my hands are
deep in my mouth
I am
doing
something to myself
When suddenly the man
drives away (obviously b/c of
our shared hyper-
sensitivity to LANGuage)
I reach over & open the
driver’s side
door. There’re three texts
you sent an hour ago &
an email from
Twitter. For a limited time
only I can barter away my
cunt for a
10 ounce jar of mastic or
a prickly
vine. My choice
O, if Musk only knew the
number of clams & oysters
I ate last night
Think of this as Act Four
Suckling
Suckling
suckling
su-ckling
Think of this as the Epilogue
The backseat fills w/ crocuses, a little
bit of winter, some wrinkling
This car, like my body, makes sense
only in so far as
they both squander their
own PLAStic
The rubber shoes I left behind at the motel
The suitcases I never picked up from Terminal Two
Poetry is a rubber. It’ s useless until you cum into it
1:55am: Just finished
what you texted
last night
I don’t know what to say other than it
all reads like a slutted out version of
The Odyssey
GOLD-
My arms reach up over-
head
in a faint dream
none of the
men
in the
Bay Area
are ever really
sticky e-
nough
I grab a pair of
crotchless
panties from the
laundry & put
on the Gold-
berg Variations
I try to remember the first time
you let me watch you pee
The beginnings of Bush’s war in Iraq
& Benjamin’s Angel of History
Do a quick wetness check & call Elaine
The word cunt is better as a verb than a noun
TEN DAYS
Day One
I’m—I typed & then crossed the street
Day Two
A man I fucked a couple of times last winter
out of the blue sent me a screen
shot of a really big sea urchin
Day Three
The airport & this entire end
of Burlingame. Everything you
see was built on landfill. Not, as you
might assume, languagefill
Day Four
I’m—& my phone suggests FICTION
Day Five
Something I can’t remember now about Georges Perec
Day Six
In my mouth there’s always something a bit extra
almost bitter, splintering & horny
Day Sven
The eucalyptus on either side of El
Camino have turned this
whole area into a FLOODplain
Day Eight
From which my waters never totally recede
Day Nine
I pulled over to change my tampon &
accidentally swallowed my own tail
Day Ten
In that moment I pulled you
out of my mouth (there are many
different ways for a body to cum)
& think about falsity of all narrative
Like that pen, the one I took from the Ramada
last week while you were peeing. It looks just
like plastic, but, in reality, it’s not
1:43am: All signification is moist
A SERIES OF DREAMS I HAD OVER THE COURSE OF
FOUR NIGHTS AT THE TRAVELODGE
CONDENSED INTO ONE
I enter the back room of a large
warehouse
delete your marriage from the
mainframe & you appear
Present me w/ a very
large turquoise ring
When the boys next door
come out into the
hallway to congratulate you
on your current erection
Every Prius in the parking
lot is covered w/ ash
or maybe music
Figuring out the
difference
entails a PROCESS
not at all
dissimilar to the shedding
of blood from my
uterine walls
We sit down at the
conference
table on floor two
& break down my last
orgasm into a series
of easily repro-
ducible
commercializable
steps
On your knees you
listen to
the last passing bus
The sounds aren’t
language, but they
are so
beautiful I want to
suffer for them
What did words begin as?
What did the body begin as?
Every man I have
ever fucked
lives on
in this gap
between my legs
& yet I am asymptomatic
Which is an example of consciousness
I peel all the mold
out from
the inside of
my car
It smells like apple
I take a video of myself
eating it
& all of the holes
of my body scream out at once
Where is your agency in all of this?
If a poem is just another hole
into & out of the body
then just push back its lips & suck
COVID
Like every-
one in the Bay Area
ever since
COVID
I have had no
appetite for
love but
have been very
hungry for CON-
cepts
Don’t tell me to stop
making these little sucking sounds
The seatbelt sign
goes
off & some-
thing is
just on
the verge of
penetrating me
like a little
Greek chorus
1:33am: Fuck it
I think I need to start
over again
and make this whole thing
a series of
couplets about Monica
Lewinsky
SCREENSHOTS I TOOK ON HIS PHONE BETWEEN 3/1/22
AND 3/2/22 AND THEN TEXTED TO MYSELF
At your earliest convenience, please DEfine THE FOLLOWING:
1. styrofoam
2. oil drums
3. inappropriate love
Didn’t I specifically say to bring the big tampons?
NO, MY DEAR, WE CAN’T POSSIBLY
CNN HAS NO GENITALS
In cases like these, usually a little bit of duck fat
does the trick
As every JACK knows full well
An erection illustrates meaning, not value
I don’t think you need to see a doctor. It’s just the
grammar of post-COVID America that’s making you shake like that
Fly into SFO enough
times and you’ll see that it’s
really just an elongated vulvic
structure that hasn’t been fucked
correctly in a long time
1:01am: There was a time, not that
long ago, when sexual freedom was
central to
anticaptialist theory
But sitting here in my car
less than 20 miles
from Apple with my
underwear down around
my ankles
All I can say is
fuck both
Allen Green-
span & Sally Rooney
❂
ANN PEDONE is the author of The Medea Notebooks (spring, 2023 Etruscan Press), and The Italian Professor’s Wife (2022, Press 53), as well as the chapbooks
The Bird Happened, perhaps there is a sky we don’t know: a re-imagining of
sappho, Everywhere You Put Your Mouth, Sea [break], and DREAM/WORK.
Her work has recently appeared in The American Journal of Poetry, Chicago
Quarterly Review, The Louisville Review, Barrow Street, and New York Quarterly. She has been nominated for Best of the Net, and has appeared as Best American Poetry’s “Pick of the Week”.