Pallid Carrier

Patron Gallery, Chicago IL

The eyelid has its storms. There is the opaque fish-
scale green of it after swimming in the sea and then sud-
denly wrenching violence, strangled lashes, and a barbed
wire of sand falls to the shore.

Or, in the midst of sunset, the passive grey lips: a
virile suffusion of carmine! itching under a plague of
allergies and tears; memories of the first soothing oint-
ment press the cornea to desperate extremity, the back of
the head, like a pool pocket, never there when you stare
steadily and shoot.

A man walked into the drugstore and said, “I’d
like one hazel eye and a jar of socket ointment, salted.
My mother has a lid that’s black from boredom and though
we’re poor—her tongue! profundity of shut-ins!
And oh yes, do you have a little cuticle scissors?”

Purchase to dream, green eyeshadow, kohl, gonorrhea,
of the currents at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.

- Frank O’Hara