Issue > Poetry
Danniel Schoonebeek

Danniel Schoonebeek

Danniel Schoonebeek's first book of poems, American Barricade, was published by YesYes Books in 2014. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, Tin Hous, Iowa Review, Fence, BOMB, The Brooklyn Rail, jubilat and elsewhere. He hosts the Hatchet Job reading series and edits the PEN Poetry Series. In 2015, Poor Claudia will release his second book, a travelogue called C'est la guerre.

Destrudo

 


But what if I tried a wasp's

eating frosting


off my swoll bottom lip


and my sex

won't let me down from the lemon tree.


What if I tried a mashed-up fist

of $2,000


bride's pye

wedding cake's in my windbreaker.


What if I tried mashing it into my face when I gave away my daughter.


What if I tried the father

daughter dance


& the voice of a cowboy singing I'm cleaning this gun.


But nothing laughs.


What if I tried dementia's the drum


which makes me

the orchestra pit


& it'll beat my nemesis


so long as I scrape on a tux & disgrace my music in front of her.


But nothing works.


I shall call these my Nothing Works.


In this year of our.


Anno domini.


I'm a man who won't climb down


pathetic you hear me lord

from his lemon tree


& smashing cake into his maw sans idolatry.


Because aroused.

Aroused is the failed word.


Not for all the tea leaves I would eat from the lord's teeth

does it begin to unearth the mortar


nor the fortress of my sanity.


All of which

I want demolition'd.


Like when I work my sanity into the loose


summer labia


of this flower boy

without


his chrysanthemum


what I hear's death pronouncing my name when his petals say thank you.


Or I'm demolitioning god

that I was not named Gabriel.      


In falsetto in

c minor in

death's brogue

in escrow


I'm death who karaokes the national anthem.

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