Lana Del Rey teaches him flower arrangement

Along the alabaster afternoon she slits calyx, cuts stem.
Her white feet lost in a wash of lilies. Stoops to decipher
the split cups flung in sunny rings. Glues them gently back.

Her gestures stir the lacquered room until it bleeds pitch, blent
into the air a memory of the practices she’s after, the body’s
long process stringing out. Slow-dance in disintegration loops.

Tonguing the end of my pen, she copies out our name,
makes me recite the line inked fifty times. Peels
strips, says take this eat of this. She hurts me until I do.

She says I like a physical love. She says I like a hands-on love.
Can make these statements since she knows she’ll change
into my clothes before the boys arrive. I’m alive to her boy hands.

Lana Del Rey teaches him to make sangría

Each little lust I husk
into the digital sink

comes back in the sting
from the quartered limes

shine, knife
primed to excise

tears the eyes’ archaic
sign. We wept long

before we could see.
Horace lived on olives,

mallow & chicory.
Strawberries, cherries

for the desert fathers.
Oh my body,

make of me always
less man than question,

the blood & the real!

 

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Zack Anderson is a frontier dandy from the high plains.  He earned an MA in literature from the University of Wyoming and is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Notre Dame.