the aggregations / of the body

the aggregations
of the body slid ing in
to collective
ness—

should i call them breasts
well if so they are
shells of concrete, pure
slabs that scratch & scrape
like wool against the skin.

(it seemed his body was made of circles
just around & around again
cup of the concave, pillar of the convex.)

in the corners of the room
deep in the reaches where the candle
and television lights do not fall
a tribe of unclothed men
watch unexonera
tingly,

(he fell over his own body, too curvy
for the darkness, too spherical
to be contained within four walls)

four-poster bed like the ocean mottled
after some shipwreck, beached bodies
bundled in bedsheets.

it is in the flickering on but never off (some
times suspended) that
their sexed eyes stare out pair by lurid pair
reminding us of infallibility or even
of just mere falling, yes of fall

ing—these ex-lovers like portents
fishy beady eyes & all
red glowing but quarantined
there where we've left them
in the corner
in the past.

we are surprised by the waves they stir up.
we are surprised that the light reaches them at all.