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             I am innocence printed on each thigh born
                                 from the day my birth was spilled on her table,
                    carried in the marked books of human beds
             Lelio Erato

1670    I am poet and province,
            need no foreign grain in my earth,
                      whether she is woman or planet,
                                           continent or moon,
            I am city and streets to the unpaved
                    coal pockets and splinters of county tables,

           Every man and each woman
                       who hobbles in one act remembered in my bones
                           rends me   I possessed in each low spasm,
                                         I famished and fed
1680                         perfect generations of opium-eaters,
            My tongue laps in a thousand languages.

            He is corrupt and cast off.
                                                    I deny bone and muscle,
               I deny his fingers    his motion
                        his sperm

             I am holy here.

             I only in my passage    I, separate
             from my manshape,  denied male         deny him
                                         remember my lowered body
 1690    laid and lifted to be planted
                  as canker on shale mountains
                                tie earth to earth    bowel to bowel
                    gravellocked he and anchored to rock
          never ascend         he brutal male
                                and thin boned boy makes no hair halo,
                 nor draws circle in air
                     nor hears voices winged, white say
         “Lelio is daughter to us,"
                                              My parents poise as weathers
1700  Of the hovering word

          Life me! bring me in dresses,
                      Lelio in the veins and minerals of women
          undying

                   Make me female among her Heavens
                                  an outcast no more tied to the streets,
                 torn from the sty of continents

                 Am daughter Am woman Am eggshaped flame
                                  risen to burn the four-limbed husk,
                      released when spasms die       end his luminous twitch
1710                                                      Am pregnant
                 I bear child on child to populate     air,
                 Comes the call to congregation,
                           Lelio in three bells
                                     peal my name to arched Heaven,
                  my face shines in her rooms
                            white as ewe’s milk
                                      open to my step
                      doors part at my fingers
                                      loud as welcome
1720                                                        Lelio come in his genius
                  “Tear me from the air Lelio,
                              immaculate Lelio,”
                                                           seven bells author all air
                  with carillon
                                             Rise up! Those sunken in mud
                               whose lungs nourish in clay,
                                       Call my congregation from all houses,
                                            those unloved who perish unmarried
                                                    are made marrow made powder,
1730                                                  blood made hard eyes dry as leather,
                 Each hand uplifted, five—pointed steeple         attracts
                                                I in bells bring Lelio
                 Lelio  Lelio  Erato   Lelio  Erato Lelio  Eralio
                         Lerato  elio    Erato    elia   Lerelia    Lerato
                                          Lerelio              Lerato
                                                      Lelio

                 come in the name in the vision of women
                                        priested

                  “Lelio has descended and the holied of his step
1740                                              rejoice!
                 Genius we chant, genius who found our pieces
                            stiff as bark    barren
                                                 trapped in his erect body
                 0 seamless flesh
                                           made without mate or milk,
                 left to be fed on pound on pound
                                   of intestine of muscle
                       damp in each other’s mouth,
                                as orgy at your feet
1750         Congregat~on of cast—off lovers.”
                 “Stable us as the parish of dresses
                                descended in bodiless glories
                 home where spire and steeple point
                                poised naked in She
                                             She untouched in all beds.”

                 “I am scion of the human house
                     whose roots are barren months.
                 I am of the core of atoms,
                     transmute no man to woman
1760                          no sperm to egg.
                 Only as the pulse of each act
                       denied in her pasted hair,
                       he perishes as the annonymous mouth
                                        on her tongue
                             unremembered male    flourish in my sex,
                  Men shall not see me and live
                        to curl again in a lower marriage bed
                                  bone on bone
                                  hair in hair
1770         mount corpses of cuckolds
                          at the foot of straddled Sinai,
                 sandplain burial.”

                 Be long in layers of her white skin,
                                 Lelio of the hours,           ascend as
                      woman of his embrace,
                 Be in her shell
                         the pink child of her arms
                                                 of her lips,
                     whose fists curl round new horns
1780                             hatched on his forehead,
                 bend from his first two—legged steps
                          to erect adolescent,
                  mature            mature, be breasted as she
                             as wife as daughter as sister
                                          of his twenty—first man season
                 or be laid stiff as fossil,
                                   penis petrified to oil.

                 as her husband as husband is dead.

                 Leave the flight of her house Lelio,
1790         She is past and printed in no hour,
                            escape from her hooked hands
                 She who tears face from skull, sucks air from lungs,
                        Lelio only in marriage to her dresses
                                lie as tenent of gravel floors
                       whose face is drawn frm pavement,
                                   tendons torn in harness
                 Of his unended climb
                                                   Hear my naked feet on each roof,
                 move each brick under me,
1800                          I am her home in sandaled streets
                                              her city
                 Jerusalem     dry as mule breath
                                  Build mosaic round Lelio    poetboy paralysed in
                 Jerusalem     where I was made pregnant,
                                  my legs scraped on tiles and arches
                                                   where no woman wept
                                  the miracle of descent from
                 Jerusalem     of the body when I first saw
                                  one woman’s face,
1810         invented her eyes from each star,
                                  her skin from midday sand
                 o I shaped her from the poles and tropics
                  of Lelio womanless                unmarried,
                 remembered pale    or lost when his body is heaped
                                             as compost,
                 journal my hunchbacked spasm to its end.

                 “After me there will be no other,”

                                  and her’s is the only face
                                               to float on the ruins of my hands,
1820                           her face in leaves of pale fire
                 wreath round my arms
                                                            “Lelio                touch me,”
                 Whose mouth consumes all heroes,
                            She in human form
                                       wrap me in the tissues of her face,
                                                   make love curl in boyhood bellies
                 succubus
                                  raise me in her fireflesh,
                 she lucifer of white witches,
1830                annoint Lelio who authors all lovers

                 “No love is more muscled than my own.”

                 “Lelio, your legs ache,
                                  your walk, numb and clumsy.
                 I perch on your wrist
                                  to steady your fragile hand
                     am the craft of your fingers,
                            the pale length of your arms,
                 Who will never be laid in your track
                        or animal in your sheets,
1840                              or lay her down on your table,    
                 “Feed me Lelio,
                         scrape your fomgers in the street,
                                  tear muscles frors your straightened back
                 to touch my hands,
                     to feel my palm in your own.
                 I am where I was first seen   motionless,
                          where I loved you while you slept,
                                           in the bell of another year,
                 am her vision
1850                              bride or mother untouched
                     she is dead.”
                 is dead when I celebrate
                                     my character some to his first woman’s bed,
                 no more a mannikin
                                                      deny impotence
                                                   deny Lelio as cattle
                                                      deny cosmetic
                 I perpetuate
                                     in another wife
1860             in the twenty—second year
                         another in the twenty—third
                                    until my skull is paraded on a pole,
                    carried to the common ditch
                                 with my hundred wives,

                 suffer the hundreth death wholly male.

                 She is   when I am as I am untouched,
                                                   I cast in the atmospheres of pale heaven
                            never heard past downfall or burial,
                 I am as she is infinite in my years
1870                           until ground rises, takes me in the hollow
                                                           parted with my name,
                                  harbor Lelio interred,

                 Lay with her in the arms
                                 of the healing earth.

* * *

Jon-Stenhen Fink