“formicate:
to discuss, or communicate in some manner,
the shape of things."

RIDING MARILYN MONROE
forty-five years after her death

Battered knuckles drive soil into moss.
Gray winter, grass blue at its edge now
wet growls pink. She’s hungry woman’s
mouth and will swallow the veil of the inner
lips beside the arms of one man who rides
rides her spine to churn up and meet
another downward, purled lips will hold
the tongue and mouth as a leaf turned
into a spout as furious fingers lead soft
cream come outward. She can feel
white motion of supplicant as breath
and friendly arm support her knees
on thick brown carpet where sway of her
ass beats drums loud until the neck pulse
lets go in a startling forward-backward
turned inside-outside double bend of arms.

In stage two, she kicks and he catches
her denouement when legs rise to suck
the skin, air and leaves into daily desire.

“I was ridden,” Marilyn said and nothing
can hold her forelegs down as the screech
of another mare well bitten runs down
her hindquarter to dance her horse fete
ass dreamed again new day. She will
spawn another flash flood dance over
great-river while two men, ignorant as
lies, drive her backward away from motel
where the poison will unsettle her talent
and keep her away from another life
that floods down where weeds mate.

I can growl in that spark with her and
feel how the come revives planet
again to keep alive what will ride stars
formed now by intuition and pleasure
drawn from mouth again to repeat
not as old flesh but as the new kind
fashioned with the glitter of sublime
razzle-dazzle, caught in the silver-blue
sky under many broken suns of shells.