“I hope the exit is joyful — and I hope never to return.”
– Frida Kahlo

Translator of omens, chloroformer
of slurs, abductor of wickedness rare

and new; at Shaman’s Drum, in Ann Arbor,
not one poet posed naked, nightmare

of flesh, on their book covers. Perversion
was just a word. Strange eyebrows, broken shoe,

Blue House; you’re still naked, your alien
body, without consent, remains on view,

exposed, gets sold. Others make us monsters.
Others sell us. Others bring us back. You

ribbon around bomb. You jaguar. You grief
in sheets too thin to scab. Blasphemies, slurs,

omens; art keeps us in hell. Who knew
that ink damns painter just like knife damns thief?