Four Poems by Dia Felix
By Dia Felix
Basic Beach…
Unfold, my potato
A bateau ivre full buttermouth for a bottomless breakfast
Brittany crepes and browned fats,
gesso me for the next meal.
I found a monster in the back of my throat,
a magician is inside my right hand,
indeed spiders scatter
when I walk their way.
A basic bitch
on a long strip of sand
imagining a numbercount of days
There’s a ripped athlete
inside this potato
I tease tender and elegant batwings
from their hiding place against my ribs
I drop pennies into cups
My brother’s sparklesuit
hangs out alone in a closet
The clothes I’m not wearing wait patiently
**
sister spreadsheet
veil opens and glitter comes forth
asymmetry of my overfed eyes
for one night, mantrapped
A cape of chocolate syrup cuts an infinity of rain shower,
doing dishes in boxing gloves she collapses in sobs,
then sobs sud-side to sighs.
If you think of yourself as a broom, a whole day of doing nothing can seem okay.
If you think of yourself as an erotic animal, a sentient rubbery tail meant to gross out asap and as often as possible,
Your gamey, unwashed hair is just fine.
I want to axe myself through, like a potato at axe practice I thwick into two coins,
I buckle and my two halfs and careened apart
for discreet weighing
If I were a potato I’d eat my fingertips for breakfast
(The indignities of animals who get their teeth bashed out for slaughter)
I go to sleep pretending to finger coins,
I die when I wake and think of you,
the perfection of your palm-tree profile,
and me in the terrible USA, shivering in a stockpot and chewing my drunk knuckles off.
Power, a blue couch, heavy pigment.
too heavy to move.
A naked woman on a bed, doing practical stuff.
the romantic family
a child loves his father’s skin.
I shiver into the pot,
again fart so loud.
Bed In a Bag
La bonne soeur
La tendresse
Tu m’undress
barely
not at all
no concern for my dressing room life no
curiousity for the spots on my diagnosis the
pattern even of my blowhole blood splatter
I’m sorry to be coarse of course, my wooden cigarette teeth
and sore-thumb clit,
my suggestion of donuts got a literal shudder instead of applause
Even your horn’s stink is expensive,
elegant to this elephantine whore,
put to sleep against your trashy downtempo music,
it worked well for the last orgy,
now we are lava lamps, easter egg gemtones,
dimming to an eggshell sleep
In the morning slip the birds play futbol american
in a cheap arch against a raspy gray sky,
ice cream hours until you leave the country
children’s perfume of milk, acid, keratin, honey, honey
my baby
Your sweet fat, a silky lather I touch you, tendresse, fern hair, baby
Against you is the only way I can be at all,
without you I am the wall of a dark bar, an institutional stink,
an ancient broad waiting to swallow.
Bird clap in horror shattered by wind
wind lifting branches and touching tenderly
the back of his neck, man wrapped in red sleeping bag,
coughing to life each morning each morning each morning
until…
Show me your texts
A bacterial spiral of seagull love,
spores of kisses,
a McFlurry,
a no-no
Consider again your armbar into my cheap mattress topper,
you kissed me like peeling foil off a yogurt container,
lowest common breakfastinator
In the pacific garbage patch where you don’t remember me
I am a dark banner of your love
spinning your name, speaking it
punching my way down
to the silent sand splash, no light.
Only ancient creatures blinking laughless mouthless
complicated octopus in ballgowns
In her pretty house with well-oiled sliding doors and
matching hangers she dreams of dying like her cher Lecompte
needle straight through dirty denim, determining demise.
Death like a double dipped dome cone,
a sunny Sunday I swam into your mirrored glasses,
orange rims like a safety cone.
Wear my sad flag of no-nation.
In the morning light in your gaze I numbered my flaws, cell count.
In the ashtray of your hashtag I licked my sour eggs
only sleep will make you pass
Only wounds sparkle
Hobokensexual with a Blackbelt in Enema Administration
Treated as literal trash not in a bad way
to be discarded; arrange yourself against a lacunae
You know what they say about lacunae
they’re better than hangnails
a blunt stick dipped in pain,
tossed
homegirl can’t handle
even the most feminist of light-touch affairs
buckles at the unwavering romance
of the Oakland Tribune building against my
Fernet-black sky
**
She went out the window and up into space
undressed she returns damp and beleaguered
eager to commit
to Gallic ideas of distilled beauty
a flash-photo of the youthful version of herself
The body staunch in its singular age,
the red coat flails and tatters around
dewy knees,
nationless flag
Compulsory bell-ringers of the weekday morning
I’m unzipping all the commuters’ mouths
hearts and guts tumble out, shining in their sauce
Assassin of my baby blankets,
sharers of frenchfries
You’re criminals, I’m telling you, criminals
A bus stop vandal can’t stop dreaming
of shattered glass thick as arm bones
disrupt this day with your ambulation,
a shoplifter’s compulsive productivity,
the crunch of a waffle, an apple.
I take you onto the cool roof, bubbles in our hands
I drop to my knees eager to show you
a bizousexual America
lithe in your mollusk fingers,
disappearing smoke,
typing, typing.
About the author:
Dia Felix is the author of a chapbook of poems, YOU YOU YOU (Projective Industries, 2017) and the experimental novel, Nochita (City Lights, 2014).
