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Title: Rockstars of the Domestic
Author: D. Armstrong
Language: en

D. Armstrong

Rockstars of the Domestic

by D. Armstrong

A chip of glitter in my sideburn (silver). How you emerge from a

Pink-streaked sunset; I dreamed you, carrying marigolds in plastic.

Poster for something NOVEMBER on 2nd Ave, my way to work,

Waking up and wearing my white shoes, walking past

A man, asleep, over a subway grate and

Pink garden flamingos bleached by weather.

Domesticity I: Rockstars of the Domestic

Dizzy gladiator stunned into a bright morning

Fae angel, finest abyss, let me hone your corners.

Fingernails chipped black on white Corningware,

Torn cuticles, paraphrasing Adorno

or Harry Styles singing something about adoration

Replay pressed on devotional mixtape

Pin-drop an arbitrary location and

I will find you on whatever fire escape

You’re jumping from. Not many shiny trinkets

Needed to wind me around your picket fence

Baby, I’ll come running, chain-linked

Lovelock, collared and coy, tensile

Utterance into the sheets we’re folding—

Guttural attachment to the act of holding.

Come visit the rooftop patio, the pink garden flamingos, the two of us

bleached by weather: summer was a chip of glitter in my sideburn

(silver).

A man, asleep, over a subway grate below

Doesn’t watch a pink-streaked sunset; his repose

wilts in the heat like marigolds in plastic.

These are not his white shoes.

He’s clutching a poster for something NOVEMBER on 2nd Ave.

Love Language I: Gifts

-for L

Tomato with salt, a knife. As if I’d use a blade instead of my hands to

lift the fruit

from the plate— impale each slice and slide the red down my throat,

steel glistening

past my tongue— see, no harm done!

As if I’d resort to elegance, or elegance disguised as violence, or a

symbolic gesture unifying the two: Pamplona, the cape furling, the

hidden swords, the huge mass of horns and dark muscle thundering like

fate

Blood is, after all, another liquid. You taught me how to eat.

You storm up the block like something NOVEMBER on 2nd Ave.

Carrying pink garden flamingos bleached by weather

In one hand; in the other, white shoes. At your approach,

The world shrinks to a chip of glitter in my sideburn (silver).

In the wake of you, I’ve forgotten the pink-streaked sunset,

The marigolds in plastic, the man, asleep, over a subway grate.

Domesticity II: Greenery

If the ivy grows roots there will be a festoon on the mantle,

a good luck charm like the opposite of albatross, a horseshoe

right-side-up.

Flung from my mother’s right hoof. She clutched ivy in her trousseau

and my parents planted the sprigs in the window box back home.

Synonyms for fidelity: spoon, fork, knife. The nice wine glasses,

darling,

a matching set. Put them atop the mahogany bar, a blurred rune, no

question

posed to devotion prior to the inevitable clink of rim to rim, crystal,

worldly edges, the extent of the sphere. How else to understand this

love

but as an investment? Flat-bottomed caravel in full sail gone bottomless

into the harbor, dubloon-heavy. Later we’ll dive the wreck, sink it all

401-Ks, bonds, make us a pretty portfolio. Bed down in moneyed quiet.

Something fidelis, the motto your cousin tattooed on his bicep drunk in

Rhode Island— providence begets providence and here is the green light,

as promised,

flickering at the end of the dock.

A man is still a man, even asleep over a subway grate—

A poster for something, NOVEMBER on 2nd Ave or a pink-

streaked sunset; living advertisement for marigolds in plastic

constructed social order, a cast of pink garden flamingos

bleached by weather. His gender is a chip of glitter in my sideburn

(silver).

Who wears these white shoes.

Love Language II: Quality Time

-for L

4,000-foot mountain. Dinner in the next town. A tank

of gas, and another. A game of pool and an Old Fashioned.

Another Old Fashioned and a lager, a phone call,

Gimme, Gimme, Gimme A Man After Midnight

(you didn’t dance, I did) followed by Montero

(the whole bar sang along, including us)

Water on the propane-powered stove. Hand-

ground coffee and toast in the cast-iron.

Sunrise; dew rising off the unmown grass.

1.5 mile trail into the wetland. My hand

at your fly, my knees in the mud,

a woodpecker drilling bugs out of a tree.

White, and carrying your shoes behind you down the sidewalk.

You are a man, asleep, over a subway grate and

in your sideburn hums a chip of glitter (silver).

Pink garden, flamingos bleached by weather.

NOVEMBER on 2nd Ave. flaps like a poster for something

along the lines of pink-streaked sunset or marigolds in plastic.

Domesticity III

when I rode horses I fastened the girth under their bellies

curry-combed their fur in slow circles, dug the mud from their hooves

with a dull hooked blade. Pulled my fingers thru tangled manes and

tugged the traces tight atop leather layers. Clutched the pommel

and swung my weight onto their spines, both legs bowed stirrupward

with heels pressed to steer thru flesh

He tossed me on the bed but I turned him over

using in this instance top as a verb akin to ride,

no sidesaddle, forgo switch for synonym

masc energy an inverted clutch with no lower gear

inveigh against limits of the flesh

stance a manifestation as in hands

on a body as in man in my bed becoming

more of himself

under my hands, he was and was not manifest

as yet always already manifest my hands made him hard

in harness shy to unbuckle a layer of flesh

Stephen Gordon rode horses, dressed in tailored clothing.

The clothes make the man. The man makes the animal

An animal. The unclothing: unmake the man, make the man

An animal.

Big show tonight: a pink-streaked sunset, featuring

Marigolds in plastic. Ongoingness of the sidewalk a drone

Beneath our collective privilege, the white shoes

And pink, garden flamingos bleached by weather.

A man asleep over a subway grate wakes up,

Rips down a poster for something NOVEMBER on 2nd Ave.

Capitalism chips the glitter in my sideburn (silver).

Love Language III: Touch

-for L

Understanding our textual communications as randomized efforts at a

shared archive means I send you anything I can lay my hands on

In lieu of laying hands on you, I screenshot the page I’m reading—

excerpt from a CA Conrad poem, something about flowers

You reply five days later with a quip about queer ephemera. I’m not

convinced but I’m wet, uncaressed, held at the length of my own wrist

Domesticity IV

See the trash heap: pink garden flamingos bleached by weather,

Pink-streaked sunset, wilted offering; marigolds in plastic.

Horizon (silver) glints, a chip of glitter in my sideburn—

Carry these white shoes to civilization’s terminus

Over a subway grate. A man, asleep on 2nd Ave;

A poster— a portent— something NOVEMBER.

Love Language IV: Acts of Service

-for L

A chair in the meadow. A pair of clippers, a towel, a comb.

Do we need a mirror? you asked

I held up the fragment I found by the woodshed

propped it against an apple tree, careful of the jagged edges

It’s not that I don’t trust you, I said, I just want to watch.

The curls fell away in fragments. Your hands covered

in jagged edges, sawdust corkscrews, soft keratin

Dead things all around our feet. It took a long time

to shave me down til the skin showed.

If we were Victorians, we’d have made elaborate lockets

or wreaths, trinkets for mourning. Instead, we laughed

at the stubble, the smoothness, the fresh angles

at my brow and cheekbone, the two of us boys in the mirror

You shook out the towel. I rocked back in the chair.

Who’s going to clean this up? you asked

The dew was burning off the grass; the morning was over.