PLEASURE PROVING

okay / scout is / mephistopheles

rilke / satan / socrates

metropole / tanz / vertical / diet pepsi / twink

femme / homme / i’m him / ninenomenon

it goes on / and on / frame

device / imagined / future-time

when we / drive / as an extant / species

when we / come on / in your car / johnny

when / we / suspension / drift / we / down

shift / baby / forfeit / social / park it / back

seat / lap sit / key change / drive / me / you

drive / exhaust / f / u / m / e / shy

ness sheared / off / whole cloth / old feeling

coral clasps / amber studs

moral lapse / ample smut

only / threw / this / party / over

throw / this / party / in the pastoral

économie / no grazing / grazie

ACTUALLY EXISTING REAL WORLD VIOLENCE

Was I seductive or twenty-one
Building a raised bed
Pulling you into frame
Collapsed vein

An instant release
Modifiers thrill me
You wrote one letter
delicate naked ordinary

You’ve always been smarter
Instead of sorry
Braids of garlic swing
In barns inside me

My uncle and aunt
Oxycontin and morphine
As a synonym: unfeeling,
no longer breathing

I could name my enemies
I could visit the Sackler family
It might be obvious, we are drafted
By the careless hand

Of an indifferent maker and live
On searchable streets
Mission tile, palm trees
Diamond-patterned driveway

Boca Raton means mouse mouth
And I miss simple misery
Weeding carrots in the rain
It might be obvious

The root must come with
When rats leap
It is joyful movement
And I could turn

Into an entrance
One foot at the opening
Of a wasp nest
Careful indifferent

SOAKING

Two people get into bed
And lie very still; one mounts the other
A third jump ups, drives down
Trying through sheer force
To make two collapse
Into one. So, the body is a cave, or an act
That opens on a purely figurative space
In Cheyenne, I draw a bath
And read your poem. The things men want to show me
Could fit in the palm of my hand
What he called his little folly
I set my face, towards an expression
We rearrange ourselves when we stand
I mean, unfold our limits
A wider opening would produce more sound
But I prefer the oo of interference
Whistling with fingers in my mouth
There I go, bringing a bowl to a plate party
Here I come, inhabiting an old dream
What could teach me to die
What could kill in degrees
Obviously, in the water it was wet
And parted like a curtain
And fought itself along the surface
Clearly, there are women in this room
And the rest resists being said
Refrigerators would make more sense
A door that screams when opened

Scout Faller is the recipient of the Leijia Hanrahan Scholarship for Communist Women Smokers. They are rarely bored.