photo: w.e. lox (?)
Three Aspects of
Desire
by F.J.
Bergmann
I. The Oscar Meyer Weinermobile:
I incorporate the desires of the
flesh, in all its senses.
No picnic or parade is complete
without me.
See! I am shaped and colored like a
penis grown monstrously large,
with a pulsating engine and a
steering mechanism.
I am the waste parts of animals made
savory
for everyone to want and want and
want.
Devour me! Eat me!
II. The cloisonné Chinese horse:
I embody desire as well, but I serve
the haunting needs of the spirit.
Arabesques of colored love overlie
the metal of the soul,
which gleams through the glossy
enamel in recurved ripples of gold,
like fissures in rock showing the
magma underneath,
like a shuddering awareness of
divine intervention.
III. The soapstone coyote:
I am the trickster, the messenger,
the slippery one.
I carry the purloined desires you
let remain unvoiced,
the unsent letter you forgot to burn
and ransacked the house for.
I race under snow-heavy boughs and
across the frozen, wasted fields
and cross the boundary between this
world and the next.
I make sure you get what you thought
you wanted.
I can talk to gods you would not
dare to name.
~ first
published in Malleable Jangle
