Lunch Poems

Slider

A new poem in which Descartes is proven wrong, and T. Rex’s Marc Bolan appears in a dream and starts thieving.

Each time I resolve not to do x
I slip to the sound of old T. Rex.
I want more than the world. My heart
unrecompensed disproves Descartes.
The snow that buries all my porn
I consecrate to your shit storm.

In the end your only guerdon
is Wo Es war, soll Ich werden.
I’m hung up on Mommy. Exit
wounds us more than the world. Lifted
strains stain the static:
a bra, a briar, my prick,

your panic. Last night I dreamt Marc Bolan
fell from his grave and stole his stolen
corpse away. It’s seen much
better days. He stole a horse,
he stole a calf. Before he left,
he gave ’em back.

Until we clear the accounts, leave
it there. Leave each starfucked nerve
to the beggars’ banquet of thin
rats that madden with the rain.
I’ll take it from here. I’ll rile the Sioux.
All I ever wanted help with was you.

Michael Robbins’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The New Yorker, Fence, The Baffler, and several other journals. His reviews appear in Poetry, The London Review of Books, and The Village Voice. He is a doctoral candidate in English at the University of Chicago. More by Michael Robbins