The man and the woman collapse on her couch— sadness. It trembles beneath his flesh

floor. His lips part, a low rumbling. She says, Is something wrong. He says, There is

nothing wrong when I’m with you. He nods, running his hands like cars against his

denim knee. His voice sticks to the precincts of her face. On the couch she cowering

against his body, a blade of grass. The man hiccups. His stare, askew. He says, My dog

died during the night. He hiccups. Grief streams down his cheeks, the ceiling sinks

down to fondle him. He hiccups. He is shaking his head, he is congenital to her skin,

contagious, her eyes drink up his mettle of trembling, soft mixes into stiff, bones linger

against skin, water is congenital to sand. The channels of the woman’s mind, dry, she

marrow all soft sinks down into the confusing surface of her couch, as evening roars

then washes down her windows. Her pulse pulses. The click of the ceiling fan. She

wraps her sorry body against the man, conjoined, she hears the click of his heart in her

ear, the pulse of the sea, tender within the click of her own pulse, his body is resplendent

and soft like brick flesh. The woman, collected across the man, combing his pebble grief

into a sack, braiding his tired. In her back room, the dryer tumbles a hot stuck load.

Click. Click. Outside the sky stalked with white flecks. He hiccups. The man is gazing up

at the television, his gaze smarts on Michael Jackson, who combs across the screen, his

limbs ooze across the stage, the spotlight trilling him, roving him, grind and pop, blue

light infinity, bedazzles, his smooth limbs lurch, they swing and slide, snaps of the

audience, young and their mouths hang open, their blown eyes stuck, Michael

Jackson, on screen he opens his jacket, swag, he swags across the low stage, hungry,

dancing, migrating his hips and suddenly the man’s gaze is slow. His breath is regular

and regulating, a machine. He says My mother is dead, my father is dead, now my dog,

this death has made me pretentious.

YOU ARE A CLIMATE CRIMINAL somebody is shouting while shoving their poster-

board against her ear. She says oh touching the side of her face. The man touches

her hand, an airplane rips open the sky, the man says, Do you want to dip. The woman

says, OK. They trip across the sidewalk, collected, conjoined. Her eyes spark against the

coast, dripping in square colors. The man’s pupils twinkle, facing the water, an oil-

breeze swimming through his hair. The man says, This water is an abstraction of our

freedom. He lances a COCA-COLA can with his alligator boot, the can spins and tangles

against the sand, dripping into the ocean. She says, You’re so good with them. The man

furrows his brows. With what, he asks. She says, Words. The cliffs stare down at the

water, the man asks the woman, Would you like to hear me sing. He sinks his palms

into the sand’s cold grit, breathing. She nods. He is stumbling down to the concave in

the dune, where the sea-grass slows. The man furls his leather palm into a microphone,

sinking to his knees, his chest poofed, screeching through his open mouth, but the wind

is rescinding all his sound. All the woman knows. Flapping of his lips. Stretched.

Granules of sand, the wind sliding on her mandible-jaw. A hot flutter in her ribs, a chord

struck among her bone, desire sparks her organs, drenching her chest of fronds in

gasoline, drenching her fauna in oil, watching the man. He’s singing. He’s done. She

flaps her sand-hands. She says, Bravo. The rain drops from the sky, sonorous, pushing

bullet-shape impressions into the sand, he scrambles up the face of the dune. Sand is

filling his boots. He roars slowly to her, weight in his feet. He drops down near her

flanks. He says, We don’t exist outside the facet of being seen, this is why I want to be

famous. Rain is gathering on the lapels of his fur coat, the woman is reaching. Touching

his matted material. He says, It's rabbit fur. She’s reaching past his collar to touch the

skin underneath his coat. He says, It’s fake — the fur. His skin, slightly damp with rain.

Rubbing her palm across his clavicles, she pinches him. Ow, he says, removing her

hand. She pushes her hands into the sand, fondling the cold pulse of the ocean. Rain

drops inside the trash crenellations. She’s closing her eyes. She lets her head drip back

into a bed of Mylar wrappers.

A spotlight is pronouncing the man’s face. A spotlight
exaggerates like a warm hand, his fist curled in exasperated
lyre. Her feet cling to the waxen floor. His leather jacket, his
bare clavicle. Her eyes searching, they cling to the stage, a
rivet, her eyes, click, she sticks her arm out, toward, the
lighted stage and she is unrolling her fingers, a loading belt,
lights comb the woman’s pupils. Her arm outstretched, the tips
of her hands straining, as darkness splits in the space between
her fingers. A beer sloshing upon her breast, she places her
hand at her side. Body pulsing. Just stands there. The man’s
voice rings out:

Your body is a candy bar
They want me to buy buy buy
Eat Eat eat
I’ll eat you, babe

His voice, strung across the crowd. A jealous grail, attracting
eyes and lobes, heads fastened, necks bent. Surely the man is a
worry to worship. A wasp wanders inside the dripped black
venue and around the fast heads of the crowd it struggles
towards the spotlight. It drops hard. Long. Wasp-wings
melt into a water dust first its body drips into a slog and
drips onto the woman who is touching a wetness on her
cheek. She’s faceless, thrusted inside dark. A face among
faces.

But I can’t go anywhere free from
The pressure to buy
Your candy body

Inside his body there is a vessel the woman cannot touch.
If what she wants is to collide with him. Staring at the man,
drenched in the spotlight, the woman’s mind starts to tick.

Fuck the government, baby
Fuck the government, baby

Why is the man a halo-tank. Why is he sculpted, erect. Why
do the women in the crowd shriek like birds, for the man who
is utmost and singular, shriek like birds against the pale sky,
gyrating their hips, his lyrics.

More!
More!

Of a wasp on her cheek. Of the loud speakers, clicking and wetting
its gears. The woman creeps out into the night dripping. Her face
is candied under the streetlamp there is a man in a tuxedo. He’s
smoking. His smoke tufts beneath the wet yellow streetlight. He
says, * Sugar, why aren’t you up on that stage*. She shrugs limp a
leaf. She hears the sound of roots relaxing in the garden. The woman
is pulled by thousands of steel-strings into the venue, into the ardent
crowd, writhing, shapeless. There is an ugliness inside the human
mass, she thinks, but doesn’t speak, looking up at the man on stage,
from ground level. Just looking, just waiting.

Some body’s finger fingers her panties. Strident and turning her eyes,
she strikes against a screen of dark. There is no body attached the
hand. The crowd is a mass of limbs. There is no enemy. There is no one
to say, Please, don’t touch me, sir. The music slows, the man is drenched
in the spotlight, elevated. The face of the woman, below. Staring, up. He
is the one ascended. True.