The Woman Sings The Song of The Second Tiger
My loneliness smokes out of my ear & stands next
to my bed, a woman in a cotton dress. The dress
makes my loneliness’s breasts look miraculous even
though it knows how exhausted I am. A tiger prowls
the inside of my hands. The woman moves her hips
in a way that agitates the tiger. There is another tiger
but he is always this way. The woman pulls her skirt
up above her knees. Her thighs are covered in stars
& water. My hands-tiger is to be kept to a strict diet
of stars & water. My hands-tiger is always starving.
The woman sings the song of the second tiger but
if I think of him, he’ll eat my hands, the woman, the
room, the oceans, space, & God. I try thinking of
nothing, count tigers as they leap into a synagogue
to die. I watch them do this for hours & hours. The
woman’s hips go on moving. Only now it is no longer
a woman. It is something whose name I cannot say
& it is turning a knife in a flame.
Clarinet
We broke
the window
with the tool.
Stole
the clarinet.
Inky ocelots
navigating
lamplight.
We felt
we had swallowed
a cyclone
or a bomb
loaded
with cyclones.
My spine
a ravine
defined
by the absence
of itself.
My fingers
clarinets
wrapped around
the clarinet.
The bomb
in my belly
hurling
cyclones
at my ribs.
But I played
with all my joy
& the night
curled up
like a cat
in my lap.
A kind
of majestic
grieving machine
begging
to be taken
apart.
Jeremy Radin is a poet and actor living in Los Angeles. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The Rattling Wall, decomP, The Rufous City Review, and FreezeRay. His first book, Slow Dance with Sasquatch, is available from Write Bloody Publishing. You may have seen him get shot in the stomach on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Great pancakes make him pretty emotional.
