Intimacy

How horrible it is, how horrible

that Cronenberg film where Goldblum’s trapped

with a fly inside his Material

Transformer: bits of the man emerging

gooey, many-eyed; bits of the fly

worrying that his agent’s screwed him—

I almost flinch to see the body later

that’s left its fly in the corner, I mean

the fly that’s left its body, recalling too

that medieval nightmare, Resurrection,

in which each soul must scurry

to rejoin the plush interiors of its flesh,

pushing through, marrying indiscriminately

because Heaven won’t take what’s only half:

one soul blurring forever

into another body.

If we can’t know the boundaries between ourselves

in life, what will they be in death,

corrupted steadily by maggot,

rain, or superstition, by affection

that depends on memory to survive?

People should keep their hands to themselves

for the remainder of the flight: who needs

some stranger’s waistline, joint problems,

or insecurities? Darling,

what I love in you I pray will always stay

the hell away from me.