threesome with personism
BY JAMESON FITZPATRICK
Let all the different bodies
fall where they may, ringing round the rosie,
ashes to ashes et cetera—
Time stops for no man
but it will pause for three, nothing metaphysical about it,
just a trick of being touched
in every place at once,
landing Lucky Pierre style in the center
of attention. To be vied for, divided at last
between two persons:
technique on the one hand, content on the other.
To be the means
of your camaraderie,
latest point in a line passing between friends.
A pastime. You’ve got nostalgia
for the infinite and I’ve got
a finger on your nerve, evoking overtones of love
without destroying the mood.
Now you are speaking
to each other through me—quicker and surer—
a game of telephone, names misremembered
and mispronounced.
It’s like Frank says: Nobody should experience
anything they don’t need to
so I had to invent a life
to write, equal parts “yearning” and vulgarity,
half tears, half refreshment.
Better than the movies,
a day in which I was in love and between it.
What can we expect?
Everything,
but
we won’t.
