Jonathan Greenhause

Two Lovers, Deconstructed

I held her heart in a heap of crumpled papers;
her feet were fixed on my closet’s fallen shelves;
her crossed eyes stared at me from ten cracked mirrors
on a sunken wall that memorized her hair.

She wasn’t only angry at my Adam’s apple
but rather raged directly at my unclipped nails
and seven toes she’d stuck into the sagging sofa
where cushions stuffed with my intentions piled.

We weren’t what you’d call a common couple:
we liked exchanging sacred claims to gender.
Her breasts for me were like an alma mater;
she sweetly called my cock a gun-for-hire.

Our bodies formed a deconstructed jumble,
a toss of limbs dismembered from their masters.
Our tangled veins had mixed two types of matter,
two bloods that bore a germ of mutiny.

She had my liver clenched in curling fingers,
my kidneys nailed to both sides of our dresser;
she stripped my eyes from sockets where they’d roamed
and tore my hair to reap the grays I’d sown.

We weren’t what you’d call contented lovers:
we kept our tongues enslaved to pleasantries
and learned that nothing lasting comes from silence
and nothing so destructive can be saved.
_____

Jonathan Greenhause lives in Jersey City, New Jersey.