a d i d a s

I turn


and my asshole turns with me.


Away is


more conceptual than being here


with you. I want a surprise


party and I want equally


to be left alone to read


and finger myself.


The mouth goes dry.


The faucet listens.


The temperature is


regulated taking a pinch


from the vastness of air


for ourselves. Sweat


beads up, closer to


everything else than me.


I’m filled with a sudden envy,


and I imagine the suspense


light sustains, each moment of


the day across stretched across


the following moment’s transparency.


Humming skin hums against


humming skin, toward flopping


its shadow on away.


The deflating romances


of Michèle Bernstein, All the


King's Horses and The Night,


are absorbed as resolute


pastiches, the unsound


disguised as sound and


wrung to drip a few


coins into the revolutionary coffers.


But when the dewy roses bloom


in the botanic garden


and quiet the season with their cologne,


they write this poem


for me, and I enjoy


the morning on this bench.


I have to be in the city


today, and my head will turn up


the sides of Houston Street.


Rimbaud's asshole, "Des ciels


gris de cristal" over


the music of Paris' bridges.


All Day I Dream:


ITC Avant Garde


floated on a wall of glass.





Ted Dodson is the author of An Orange (Pioneer Works / Wonder, 2021) and At The National Monument / Always Today (Pioneer Works, 2016). He works for BOMB, is an editor-at-large for Futurepoem, and is a former editor of The Poetry Project Newsletter.