Soft Targets
–Deborah Landau
It was good getting drunk in the undulant city.
Whiskey lopping off the day’s fear.

Dawn came with an element of Xanax.
Dusk came and I dumbed myself down.

Where there were brides, grooms–
bored boysoldiers with iphones and guns.

I’m a soft target, you’re a soft target,
and the city has a hundred hundred thousand softs.

The pervious skin, the softness of the face,
the wrist inners, the hips, the lips, the tongue,

the global body,
its infinite permute softnesses.

~
Soft targets, soft readers, drinkers,
pedestrians in rain–

In the failing light we walked out
and now we share a room with it

(would you like to read to me in the soft,
would you like to enter me in the soft,

would you like a lunch of me in the soft,
in its long delirium?)

The good news is we have each other.
The bad news is: Kalashnikov assault rifles,

a submachine gun, pistols, ammunition,
and four boxes packed with thousands of small steel balls.

~
O you who want to slaughter us, we’ll be dead soon
enough what’s the rush.

And this our only world.
As you can see it has a problem.

As you can see the citizens are hanging heavy.
The citizens’ minds are out.

Eros, eros, in Paris we stayed all night
in a seraphic cocktail haze

despite the blacked out theater,
the shuttered panes.

Tonight we’re the most tender of soft targets,
reclining by the river pulpy with alcohol and all a-sloth.

Monsieur can we get a few more?
There are unmistakable signs of trouble,

but we have days and days still.
Let’s be giddy, maybe. Time lights a little fire.

We are animal hungry down to our delicate bones.
O beautiful habits of living, let me dwell on you awhile.