Evening Will Come: A Monthly Journal of Poetics (The Art of Losing—Issue 58, October 2015)

Tenney Nathanson
sec.UR.IT.y
you wouldn’t share your toothbrush . . .
don’t share your PASSWORD!
YOU ARE IT!

you wouldn’t share your toothbrush

don’t share your iPhone

you wouldn’t share your password

don’t share your lunchmeat, Anna Karenina, or the thong

you wouldn’t share the lunar module or the snake

don’t share the vegemite sandwich or the land of love

you wouldn’t share lofty thoughts beneath the pincered heavens longitudinal as polar summer, icefloes dotting the mind, then lumbering bears

don’t share your toenails

you wouldn’t share the hero in Manhattan

when you visit Massachusetts don’t share the sub

you wouldn’t share the malted, the shake, or the frappe

don’t share the cabinet

you wouldn’t share “going commando”

don’t share truth is the consequences in my house

you wouldn’t share the GW spanning the glinting waves the cars gliding over the sloshy giant river in afternoon light

don’t share David’s tempered unbridgeable pathos

you wouldn’t share Kenneth’s fifty minutes of improvised iambic pentameter oh it’s easy he said and continued with no apparent effort the entire class

don’t share as a calm darkens among water lights or your death

you wouldn’t share crossing the English channel groping her pants on the ferry right after you met, in plain sight of the older Frenchman muttering his distaste in the deck chair right next to you

don’t share like a mattress’s teeth brushed by love’s bristling sun

you wouldn’t share deep thoughts are the road to sure ruination in Ft. Lauderdale in 1965

don’t share the casually proffered opinion that sure, it’s fine to sign the non-renewable contract, when it says you thereby relinquish your tenure rights it doesn’t mean that

you wouldn’t share legitimate rape

don’t share truth is the consequences in my house

you wouldn’t share the third Bratwurst from the sun

don’t share Ohio’s shiny new voter registration test

you wouldn’t share Florida

don’t share the gila monster waddling across the road getting ready to be dead

you wouldn’t share the turkey vulture

don’t share East Germany 1991 spluttering like a trick candle sparking tiny neo Nazis

you wouldn’t share 47%

don’t share of course he won he gave “gifts” to blacks, Hispanics, poor people, the young, and queers

you wouldn’t share West Germany absorbing them and staying afloat the bell buoy of Common Market growth the John the Baptist of the coming of the EEC

don’t share better red than bead

you wouldn’t share the writhing keyboard or gila monster

don’t share your toothbrush

you wouldn’t share your spot in line for rationed goods in the liberated Soviet Republic

don’t share the White Russian, the Georgia Peach, or the Georgia Slop

you wouldn’t share truth is the consequences in my house

don’t share the Harold and the Purple Cray tax cut

you wouldn’t share goodnight moon

don’t share goodnight Chet, goodnight David

you wouldn’t share I’m telling you the truth I swear

don’t share orbicular in thee I place my trust

you wouldn’t share Bain Capital’s roster of start-up Salvadoran investors with clear-cut ties to d’Aubisson’s death squads

don’t share say goodnight Gracie goodnight George

don’t share “forms have an attraction to which we gradually yield”

you wouldn’t share the basketball

don’t share Jeremy Lin

you wouldn’t share the photographs of the mass graves in the death camps

don’t share Carmelo Anthony’s toothbrush

you wouldn’t share the Georgia Peach

don’t share Metta World Peace

you wouldn’t share your elbow

don’t share what’s the sound of one hand

you wouldn’t share quickly, don’t think good don’t think evil, show me your original face before your parents were born

don’t share James Hardin’s head

you wouldn’t share your seven children under the bush with red berries

don’t share the password or the red herring

you wouldn’t share the ceviche

don’t share the sushi

you wouldn’t share stuffed in the closet due to unsuitable comportment

don’t share The Complete Writings of the Language Poets

you wouldn’t share it was an adult consensual relationship dammit

don’t share the poem that agrees to forego the fork stuck in the head

you wouldn’t share Bob Perelman

don’t share Simon says pastiche is the slowly rotating death knell of collage

you wouldn’t share General Petreaus

don’t share Jill Kelley

you wouldn’t share the cocktail deck at Windows on the World revolving Sylvie across the harbor and the lower Manhattan skyline

don’t share your 24-year-old Parisian dentist fling or the dead frog

you wouldn’t share truth is the consequences in my house

don’t share memory’s obscure relation to desire

you wouldn’t share it was like an ice cave a million miles thick

don’t share the razzle-dazzle maggots are summary

you wouldn’t share Union Square or Barney’s on the Square

don’t share the QE2 in the outer harbor in full view from the ferry Fellini-esque mirage you already wrote about once in Home on the Range

you wouldn’t share the whole universe was sheer darkness

don’t share the golf cart

you wouldn’t share they jumped from the hundredth floor window hand in hand to avoid the flames

don’t share when they fell they fell

you wouldn’t share “pervading the whole universe! Not a spot whatsoever to take hold of!”

don’t share Cathy in Hampton Bays in the bed

you wouldn’t share “I am quite at ease to take hold of it”

don’t share the liner’s white expanse against the chopped up waves your body rising and falling

you wouldn’t share “forms have an attraction to which we gradually yield”

don’t share “o you monk in a dark cave” while he excoriated him and twisted Hakuin’s nose

you wouldn’t share Mr. H

don’t share Mr. S

you wouldn’t share your toothbrush

don’t share” the shirt’s collar’s far away”

you wouldn’t share your password

don’t share as a calm darkens among water lights

don’t share your toothbrush

you wouldn’t share a monk asked Zhaozhou

don’t share is there a password

you wouldn’t share an ordinary evening in new haven

don’t share under the eaves a two ton giant squid wallowed and thrashed along the outside wall of the house where usually a faded green garden hose languished and, by the grace of god, several snails were glimpsed scaling the damp walls of Connecticut

you wouldn’t share no he answered

don’t share what is this no

you wouldn’t share the cultured pearl dream of the third untarnished nacreous scenario

don’t share I placed a jar in Tennessee

you wouldn’t share another time a monk asked him, is there a password?

don’t share of course, he said.

you wouldn’t share your password

don’t share your toothbrush

you wouldn’t share what is that truth that’s prior to all possible circumstance, be it positive or negative

don’t share the Chihuahua.