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Diane Tang

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Laser-Man

Maybe it’s the head in the bandage talking,
maybe it’s me with my snip and my poke
and my prod and my tuck and my wonderful knife
of light. Afterwards your one bruised eye
will swell its patient, vacant gratitude
through the hole to me, upscaling me
so shockingly I cannot help myself but soar
to that high, intimate room where the makers
of angels, new angles and omissions lounge and tell.

I know you love me. I know I love me
and cannot fail to give it to you:
nose, jaw, thigh, pec, boob, tum unflawed -
extend the unmentionable, delete the unwantable -
and I’ve the cash and the cars and the babes
on the arm to prove it, oh sweet, sweet mine.

There, there.  Inside, is your head full to bursting
with the heat of it? Is there a warm, warm glow?
How divine it is, you, me lit up like a Christmas tree,
trailing the knives and the lights and the ooze and the flush
behind us, all over us, all over our lives.


Joint Second Prize of the Bedford Open Poetry Competition 1998

Page(s) 72

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