Wayne Koestenbaum

 

[older I get]

older I get, more serious I become
about wearing
makeup and wig.
caftan, too. always interested in a rub, kind sir:
love yr eyebrows.
admittedly, my pix
disguise age.
mix turquoise, king’s blue, bluish purple: impose mix
on passive quinacridone
violet’s impersonality.
try to figure out how clearly delineated
“subject positions” find
angles of mutual
pleasurable engagement without
destroying each other.

Joan Rivers baking Xmas cookies seen sideways
through tunnel window’s
mirror lake Simi-
lac® simulacrum.
“this administration is the worst thing to happen
to orange since
Agent Orange,” quips pundit.
every novel I love is fragile. red stars
on black duffel bag
triangulate with
Lynn Redgrave’s in-
dependent sources of self-
esteem, not harvested from Lear.
wrongly seeking sublimity in barn-roof gutter crevice.

lucent ceiling corrugations a dauphinois
potato when his Pompeii
gaze claims me, then disappears.
kouros-carved lips, stone lingerie, scandal
pudding: congregated
shames comprise a menu.
hives on my calves, awaiting Purim-Benadryl’s
alleviation: sob-collapse
throws ash on coffin
lowered: crowded town
car back from cemetery
to capers, cream cheese.

abstract expressionism is what happened at the hospital:
fools disputing climate
change, Tiffany
blue establishing shot’s
concentrated inattention.
“I’m glad you gave up the figure,” she said:
but I haven’t
stopped pursuing nudes.
to be the dread golem, aloof in Prague, boning
up on feuilletonisme,
Eton pea-coat toggles
unclasping gelt-Jocasta.