[flesh-pLastique], BY DENNIS HINRICHSEN |
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The genital laziness of the mouth. The genital shallowness of the armpits. -Malcolm de Chazal, sens plastique my brain on fusion versus my brain on fission is tongue // singular muscle probing // in around above between // little flicker at the tip of breath // the flesh-plastique I suck down and chew // gulping the god of it // sense of her body (gone) // eating mouth // skin and all // —as for the backwash it’s just little eddies of hair // swirls of reeds // memory in breakdown (earth’s body) // my longing so vast some days it is a South Pacific vortex // a blue movie tape loop reduced to fingernail-sized bits of plastic waves keep busting apart until they are nano micro defused by wind // and so I wonder: does she taste me back when she is lonely // desires touch again // or am I just a polar lightning strike now the Arctic’s warmed // igniting deep burning zombie fires (I have wronged her I have read it in her poems // I am tire tread cut by pavement) // —O Death-erotic you are so full of life sometimes // the kiss of her still deep in the skull |
Dennis Hinrichsen’s most recent work is schema geometrica, inaugural winner of The Wishing Jewel Prize from Green Linden Press (forthcoming in Fall 2021). His other work includes [q / lear], also from Green Linden Press, and This Is Where I Live I Have Nowhere Else To Go, winner of the 2020 Grid Poetry Prize. He has new poems forthcoming in On the Seawall and West Trade Review. He lives in Lansing, Michigan.