Intimacy
How horrible it is, how horrible
that Cronenberg film where Goldblum’s trapped
with a fly inside his Material
Transformer: bits of the man emerging
gooey, many-eyed; bits of the fly
worrying that his agent’s screwed him—
I almost flinch to see the body later
that’s left its fly in the corner, I mean
the fly that’s left its body, recalling too
that medieval nightmare, Resurrection,
in which each soul must scurry
to rejoin the plush interiors of its flesh,
pushing through, marrying indiscriminately
because Heaven won’t take what’s only half:
one soul blurring forever
into another body.
If we can’t know the boundaries between ourselves
in life, what will they be in death,
corrupted steadily by maggot,
rain, or superstition, by affection
that depends on memory to survive?
People should keep their hands to themselves
for the remainder of the flight: who needs
some stranger’s waistline, joint problems,
or insecurities? Darling,
what I love in you I pray will always stay
the hell away from me.
Paisley Rekdal, "Intimacy" from Animal Eye. Copyright © 2012 by Paisley Rekdal. Reprinted by permission of University of Pittsburgh Press.
Source:
Animal Eye
(University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012)
