Please Write Me a Ten Page Paper (Adrienne Rich revised)

I parked my car
behind the raw
construction site
up a sloped drive
it was staff only

black foundling
briefcase
held my unstapled
paper in its mouth
a morning's work

burning in my viscera
bile, vomit, anxious puke
like the smell of beefalo
hanging in strips
in Jeannie's garage

that later I chewed
approving the skill
of my father
not once tasting
the reek of the meat's

slow rot that kept
the car in the driveway
and drove the great dane
mad with lust for juices
dripping to that blue bowl

and now I wish
for discipline
when work glowers
like a parking ticket
or a hungry tree

Adrienne Rich asks me
where was I
and I tell her
I want to be sorry
but my scrawls seep

into the page and vanish
my maps, not her maps,
because the cartographer
lost interest and swam
back into the straight rivers

time is not abstract
it's the taste
in my throat
when I know
this life is rotting

and a tree-beast
chews me
like strawberries
and swallows me
into its cavernous tank

that gluts on my smiles
I soak there
in limey cave water
in no-bottom pools
that pull my flesh down

to the forgetful
river's bed
where I am mashed
and ground to grains
by those thick waters

No map helps me here
no echoes call back
my atlas is full
of white-white pages
and greasy meat-rot stains