The Spurs on the Legs of Pheasants, Lark Lasky

72 THE SPURS ON THE LEGS OF PHEASANTS Lark Lasky

You and your California viciousness I and my strict northern sternum Stir across from each other in the kitchen where all of the glass is breakable. We would shatter the china if not careful. It will feel like pulling teeth, you warn, and I say, Yes I know but wasn’t that the best feeling in the whole world? before pain was sharp and had real teeth to bare and cut being and had messages It was when there was a dull aching mess and it was before pain was really pain and it was just— Well, It was pure hurt. Purehurt that felt good. We were built this way, is what I am trying to say with my eyes across the table and the ashes on my plate Made defensively with these pieces sharp and jutting So that we could do these things to each other Only with each other Only when I feel you, a threat run down my spine When you feel me, an intruder in the bones of your home What I mean is that I hope you’re telling the truth, I say out loud this time,

I hope it feels exactly like pulling teeth. Do you remember hearing the rip of your roots, From the inside of your mouth?

Here there are tendons and there are the fracture heals, and, we don’t need to talk about the bones, There I’ll slot my knee. In the morning I’ll catch that heavy blue gaze over the steam of your coffee Maybe we’ll confess ourselves in the smoke of cherry cigarettes We’ll forget each other separately together much later on Climb some trees like children Far away and at the very same time

Perhaps when we’re older All of our teeth will fall out and again we’ll feel Clean as children do Pleasurepain in the ache of our soon to be rotten mouths I’ll live in your memory only as a sycophantic predator A passerby with all the hazards of invasion flashing in my supermodel white teeth You in mine as the iridescent victor A homebody with mechanics of preservation splayed on your marble smooth skin

In the other house: I will think of you in the creak of the hardwood floors Only when they become old enough to do such a thing For this home is new I have only just destroyed its inhabitants.

Every time I pass a street window without seeing my own reflection I will remember The kitchen where we were gentle. I will have forgotten that it was not for each other It was for those frailties of our surroundings because If not for the fragile glass in that breakable house I would have torn at the bloody cavity that lives promising inside your fast beating heart And you might have ripped out both of my formerly broken ribs