the destroyer > text > Christie Ann Reynolds

from GLAMOUR KITE

An obsession with legs like horses’ or humans who leave

The ground in a jump or an elegant shadow of mosquitoes

Are supposedly not disease-causing but caution to the man who loves you so well

He wells up into you like you were just a flower

So don’t you dare well up into me/well up into me /well up into me

List reasons for the rise of Australopithecus or different

Names for the same evolution of breaking the genome open like a skull

On the curb because it isn’t fair enough/fair enough

For our lives to be so weathered by economy by the anomaly

Of finally being above the failure and futility card

Or like birds the nest the weather the trees the catastrophic

Sky holding kites for glamour and like birds/like birds

Our lives flown away/our lives flown away/our lives flown away like that





I make zest with a lemon on the formica to heighten

Your embarrassment turns boldly yellow

In the late evening or last night I asked you

In my head touch me this way or move your fist

Into my ear and then unfolding all five fingers

Your breath became tigers clawing at my hypothalamus

Until it swelled and peeled away like jellyfish

Until it swelled and peeled away like jellyfish

On the surface in soft puddles of flesh

Out the evening in a cocktail dress then remove it/then remove it

—My equanimity is nothing

If you don’t know how to make my coffee or offer a right

Way to fuck and how did you get into my laugh the way angels in the doorframe

Appear in a photograph of charred huts in the underbrush I found

A small locket with the inscription

The longer she talks to me the longer I live

The longer she talks to me the longer I live





Free fingerprints on your sunglasses and in rays of After-

Light you lift gallantly you will be the most beautiful shining nakedness

Is not as prized as nudity although I did say I would finally undress

In front of your face after an obsessive race of hair

Drags and shatters in the rise of a speed bump

Beneath tires and across the car seat I climb into the basket

You’ve made of your arms your elbows

Take me to the back/take me to the back/take me to the back

Seat take me to the lawn                I don’t care if there are gravitational

Decisions made by the lackluster scars of incisions

My father inscribed with a rake—

Oh it is ok now

I can tell you I’m the Me

I can tell you I'm the Me             the hole of

Self a ruse I made to please

To please-please

To be-be

To be pleased

To please some creature

And the eyes you look at me with how did they

Venture into my trough—

Get them OUT





The longer he looks at me the

Longer the looks he at me and

The longer he looks at me the

Lover the longer I look at me and

The longer he looks at me the longer

He looks at me the longer he

Looks at me the longer he looks

At me he longingly looks he looks he looks

He looks





To Calgary there are no soles/to Calgary there are no souls

Or soluble liquids allowed inside planes and the palm

Tree—with which you replaced me/you replaced me

I don’t cry/I don’t cry/I don’t cry                I ration

Lilies in preparation for reincarnated wealths

Of wreaths to lie upon your surfboard

Like bodices like the crossroads

Of indecent underwater finger fucking

I need to know

Are you the weaker/Are you the weaker/are you the weaker

In a place we only leave/we only leave

Its impossibility/its impossibility

That gets us here/that gets us here

But just because/but just because/but just because

There’s no I must know/I must know/I must know-know

The amount of miles we will have parted

Should we count every step we’ve taken/Should we count every step we’ve taken

Since we parted/Since we parted





To be your master to be your

Mate or to mate

And simultaneously matter

That’s what I seek to master

O duplicity on the half shells were

Covering the beaches more so than bodies

I was a child the whole summer without ocean

When the plane imploded or who knows

How it was unlocked from the cloud-cover

Over that same expanse living people

Throw their bodies out attached to parachutes

Won’t always save/Won’t always save

Hypothetical ninjas climbing to their black

Throne or throw or throw or throw

Your arms around me

Make me hula hoop

Your body bent into a ring

Make me draw a line in the lake-light with an oar

So the darkness beneath gets to have a look too

Make me draw a line in the lake-light with an oar

So the darkness beneath gets to have a look to