Network, rhythm, whole:

A part of me says ––

Beset me with honey;

she pulls the bedsheet along

her newly-shaved claves;

she never loses her erection.

-

A part of me is

the still damp air in a party balloon;

he smiles with his hand over his mouth

because he has braces and is exquisite

to no one.

-

A part of me wants

to quiver, full of arrows

and smell the fletching hair

of so many men.

-

A part of me fears

his mother dying and the lozenge

that will stick in his throat because of it.

-

I am standing on the pile of firewood

clearing the drains of mud with a stick.

I am taking on a responsibility.

A part of me has its eye on the time.

Spear

I want to float out of my mind and into my body.

The body is better; it has different affordances.

With a body, I could put my hand around his jaw

and draw him in for a kiss. With a mind, I could

stop myself from doing that.

Talking to you in the observatory while you cried.

Sometimes I can take

a long time

to feel. Like a boomerang you forgot you threw, etc.

Don’t worry!

My inhibitions–my mind–they run into my very balls.

I may not be very principled (after all), and that’s a thought,

but you are a form that shapes, a regular pattern, a whole

that encloses and a network that connects and I can’t just

walk formless away.

Jake Arthur 

Jake Arthur is a graduate student who is writing a thesis about garden poetry, though he knows little about either. He has recently published an essay on poetics in Poetry NZ.