Franco - Quarry

Quarry anthroposcopy the skull is a cage or carriage with skin stretched over like a map on a globe. the forehead is a plain scarred with grooves from a plough. the eyebrows are islands of leaning spruce trees. irises are twin dormant volcanoes, the pupils are craters of ash. the nose resembles home but every pore is an exit, welcome then say goodbye to a virus you contracted. a shallow cave is dug out of the clavicle. the ribs are a trap set inside a pyramid. find me a body to grow old with. skin falls like a sandstorm, scatters and shifts. the hips are an arrow at a crossroads pointing to shelter but the legs keep going, are agitated travellers. the heart has slid from sleeve to inner thigh. how must one remember? voyeur notre dame des quilles, montreal every door and every floor-to-ceiling window is open onto rue beaubien there is no difference between in / out, you / me. studying people in their bodies from a bar stool, as cal, on the clock, signals evening, scattering candles at tables like stars. sauntering into the bar with a leather jacket cigarette swagger, but its too hot for leather. which way are they headed? bois against the bar, their hips like eagle wings, breathing / open existing in other peoples bodies for a moment the bar, breathing, and the holes in their tank tops, skin, breathing to whom / what are they facing? more holes than windows to what extent is the body aware of its intentions? night black / dark, bar cool / dark the body floats in the direction of what it wants exposing, half in / half out, all hot, no breath if you study a body in a bed or in a karaoke bar you learn things about your own body. partake together, leave the door open, invite whomever mysterious instrument, what solar calculator is this?
/ across from the bar, on the second floor, there is a balcony a suspended stage. a svelte boi lives there, with long black hair, they part the curtains when they have visitors. sometimes plus one, and sometimes plus two, romeo on romeo on julieta on juliet on julien on jo. summer shows have become pretty regular these evenings dark / black, intoxicating, like breathing gin through air. in the ebb of the humid air, it is as if we are connected by the same breath, two bats returning nightly to the same tree. the boi rearranges for us to get a better view pushes the leather couch closer to the balcony. the couch, like a great open mouth, opens to us, watching from the edge of our bar stools. glasses of rose wine on their coffee table the curtain slips out its ankle. they share foreplay leaning on the black rail, mouth on neck on hand on hip balancing cigarettes poised between their fingers, like snipping scissors, smoke slipping in their ear the still nights tongue. the boi is kissing all our necks the bartender, the busser, me they undress each / other. the cash register crashes and booms like a distant storm as cal rings in sales to the beat of the bass, and the clash and spark of hip bones. thunder striking. crack me open a club soda and spray me like a wave who i am doesnt matter. cal is saying something, handing me change then jabbing a finger on the ring-stained wood touching is not actually touching (fans push the hot air around us) touching is the act of atoms resisting each other touching
is resistance the thing about me i am taking myself on an epic romantic date. guatemala, spain, peru, panama. goodbye. me myself and i. i dont know when ill come back. when i feel like it. the thing about me, and im thirty, is that i can do these things and there is no consequence. i am unattached. romantically, i am queer. the thing about me is i learned autonomy. i can do anything i like for example right now i congratulate myself because i am eating dates while bareback on a horse on the way up to the top of a volcano. i decided to do this just today. the thing about me is there is no limit to self-growth or achievement. the thing is you cant stop reaching or you will be boring. its terribly exciting. sometimes i think if i went the other way, would i ever really be able to leave with no consequences, to go to the edge of a beach on an island somewhere and contemplate my aloneness, to really sit in myself? i dont mind it. the thing about me is roaming and self-discovery extend until at least my forties. i dont age; i have no age. maybe its this volcano. forever young, forever free, forever bold, forever me, forever forever forever. dead horse bay ii. thousands upon thousands of bottles / only by boat / buildings and people and the layers / all but forgotten / a millstone is / usually empty / its name / reviled / when horse-rendering plants still surrounded the dead horse bay / cap burst in the 1950s and / sometime in the 1850s / has a long / era, around the turn of the / left over from the 17th century / dead horse bay sits at the / when dutch settlers used the water / like most of new york city / the 1930s / by the 1930s / conjuring / the carcasses of dead / garbage incinerators / century / garbage incinerators / from the 1850s until / one-inch chunks of / much of old new york has / 1920s there was only one rendering / again, and replaced again by new / bones were later dumped into / arent quite gone either / found throughout years old, litter the shore / litter the shore / not true at dead horse bay / scavenging another eras trash / another eras trash / the horses / the horses / since then garbage has been / been torn down, replaced, torn down / horse-rendering plants / fish oil factories and / into the ocean / dotted by / trash heap / horse bone / a somewhat unpleasant reminder / beach of glass / leather shoe soles / horse carcasses / pieces of metal and plastic / metal and plastic / became scarce / and the / plant left / the plant left / it was during this / the trash spew forth onto the / perfect setting for / of history / all but forgotten / hardy bits of trash pepper this / a marshland once / quiet / the car industry grew / horses / began to be used / where remnants of the past litter / broken and intact / at the site / at the site / chopped-up, boiled / leaking continually onto the beach and / the putrid fumes that hung overhead / that hung overhead / tide mills to grind / the beach today / the beach today / a landfill / as a landfill / filled with trash / horses and other animals / from new water / from new water / the squalid bay / then accessible / history of changes / history of changes / over the years / rusty telephones / and scores of unidentifiable / scores of unidentifiable / the dead of / the marsh / Quarry: pbs swimming out from the mound of sand and flat rocks jutting out into the quarry, to the other side, i was being watched, the sun was going down fast and soon it would be gone, fretful, frenetic september, all of this felt, not understood, i swam to the boulders on the other side and climbed up the warm, wet rocks, watched the half nude people on the other side, sunning themselves like three pebbles, sat thinking of what to do next, i wanted to jump from that outcrop into the warm pockets of the emerald water, smooth fluorite, silk, opal-cold, pond on mars, the pebbles were talking but also one pebble was turned in my direction, at this distance we were only really able to look at each other, the pebble was considering something looking at me, was squinting with eyebrows pinched to see better, like their pupils were letting in too much light, i wanted to wait until the water was one smooth ellipse i could facet myself into but the water wouldnt fizzle out, it bevelled in little skips and hops our eyes taut like fishing line perception or or