a cento for Max*
The moon was dark.
She had eyes, I could see them—
eyes like blisters.
She described an orgasm
is like a quiet, clean man folding sheets—
small, precise, and a little wicked.
The hilarious moon—
part bone, part me—
your gift for gab is of cosmic import.
Made of shadow
with white chalk,
your lips, right after mine, form a crescent.
In our bed, in the dark,
when you smile, every tooth is a perfect O
staring at pictures, paralyzed for hours.
Look at me and bore me—
to ever be bored
under the light of the moon.
Listening to you makes me naked,
my body lit up—
not sleeping, for who can sleep
beyond the door, in the realest bed
where we levitate—
true not only of the world, but of perceiving it.
*A circular cento using lines from different poems in Max Ritvo’s Four Reincarnations (Milkweed Editions, 2016), starting and ending with “The End.”
Title: “Appeal to my First Love”; 1 “The End”; 2 “Plush Bunny”; 3 “Radiation in New Jersey, Convalescence in New York”; 4 “Stalking My Ex-Girlfriend in a Pasture”; 5 “The Senses”; 6 “Lyric Complicity for One”; 7 “Universe Where We Weren’t Artisis”; 8 “The Watercolor Eulogy”; 9 “Poem in Which My Shrink is a Little Boy”; 10 “The Vacuum Planet of the Pee Pee Priestess”; 11 “The Blimp”; 12 “Poem About My Wife Being Perfect And Me Being Afraid”; 13 “For Crow”; 14 “Poem Set in the Day and Night”; 15 “Dawn of Man”; 16 “Sky-Sex Dreams of Randal”; 17 “The Curve”; 18 “Troy”; 19 “Hi, Melissa”; 20 “Afternoon”; 21 “The Big Loser”; 22 “When I Criticize You, I’m Just Trying To Criticize the Universe”; 23 “Poem To My Dog, Monday, On Night I Accidentally Ate Meat”; 24 “The End”