fascinations: in the desert
there is a reason the aliens
chose here the world
at its largest in the sun
& in the rain the eye
looking back
to the plateau’s face to
the place where the earth’s rim
once was & here
there is a way the body
dissolves becomes
a dream of contact
of touching lightly
the inner thigh &
the eye
sheds it all peels
the eggskin around it
away the redrock
growing now enormous
becoming for miles
the only real thing
fascinations: cityscape
he was looking for his father
& now he is not
because of
the bathhouses
because of the neon
& the eyes & the sound
the showers make
at the y he looks
at the horizon sees
a collection of teeth
if he throws his body forward
hard enough he thinks
something will have
to come loose have
to give
fascinations: molly
yes he says
& yes & yes
his eyes expanding
& devouring yes
the men yes
the dancing the bodies
dancing yes
yes the skin glossing
yes frosting
with salt yes
& in the bathroom
yes in the aluminum
stalls each aperture
glorious yes
gloriously opening
yes yes like a tulip
yes into lips
& bodyheat yes yes
there a part of him yes
goes must go yes
yes yes &
he sees yes
his face in the metal
yes in the burnished
wall yes
until he exhales
yes yes
& then he does not
see it yes yes
& then yes
it is gone
yes yes
Walking in the City
after Michel de Certeau
first the door & then
the doorway
& the street unfurling its black
wings
there are of course
actual birds
as well as metaphorical birds
the birds the man remembers making years ago
of everything that passed
his window
& there is the flower shop
& its flowers
the yellow spilling from its mouth
the jeweler’s artificial palm trees
& barred windows
& closer to the river
the unicorn tavern
& the gay bar
the men smoking always
on its stoop
the man
catalogues it all
what is real
& unreal
the cars & carousel horses
the hands sewing the street up
with needle & white thread
the man knows
these hands are his
that most of what he touches
would rather not be touched
& in this way
the man is typical
licking a grain of sand until
it is radiant
he wanders from farmer’s market
to liquor store
watches the seagulls
swooping low
& when
he reaches his apartment building
he has a key that lets him in
& later
if he wants
he knows it will let him out
but now he slips his key
through the door’s brass eye
& his body follows it
he wants to go inside
Author Note
As someone who does both creative and critical work, my poetry and literary criticism often cross each other in strange ways. That’s the story of these poems, as many of them draw on the research I’ve been doing lately on fascination, and all of them speak back to the literary canon in some way. The showers in “fascinations: cityscape,” for example, recall John Rechy’s City of Night, and “fascinations: molly” places the experience of doing MDMA in conversation with Molly Bloom’s monologue at the end of Ulysses. Blending the poetic with the theoretic, these poems attempt to blur the boundaries between the present and the literary past, between criticism and poetic creation.
Author Bio
Patrick Kindig is a dual MFA/PhD candidate at Indiana University, where he studies American literature and writes poetry. He is the author of the micro-chapbook Dry Spell (Porkbelly Press 2016), and his poems have recently appeared in the Adroit Journal, Willow Springs, CutBank, Thrush, Bombay Gin, and other journals.
