Closer to Murder Than to Love

“[…]with claws and fangs. i’ve been talking
to you all along,
i think, packing my thoughts with ice
and fluid

like a series of hearts en route to
their new chests.
[…]an alarm that sounds for anyone
who’s listening. gods of empty pews,
if you’re listening[.]”

— Maria Zoccola (Maria Zoccola, “helen of troy explains to the gods,” Stanza 1, Lines 3–4 and Stanza 2, Lines 1, 3–4 (Lines 3–5 and 7–8 overall), in Helen of Troy, 1993: Poems, published at New York by Scribner in 2025; page 62.)

               A golden shovel from Anne Sexton’s
                         “The Double Image”—

                         i.

Life-spanning, but not life-explaining, I—
memory longer than my beard—had
to write, not why outgrown,
but how much so, now the
virtuoso, once an unknown artist,
has no fear to get caught
in, guilts bared trap us,
though innocent, asking to know at
what moment letting go the
good screw, meant letting two turning

                         ii.

from monkeys to meat, we
created nude need to eat, smiled
cannibalistically as ravenous Cabalists in
too deep to retreat from our
secrets working, keeping wet canvas
flesh fresh fuck painted, our home
so stained in afterglow before
we even bathed but, changed, we
lost speech, knew names, chose
wordlessly to taste heat when our

                         iii.

crucible mouths cradled truths foreknown,
went on to oracle-out loud separate
alphabets of perversions, lewd ways
through static channels snow chews, the
same route driven away dry
by two raw-loving dudes lawless red
orifices aped lips, gaping fur
kisses winking blind charities no fox
would wait long to coat
in waxen tears wept, as was

                         iv.

then customary for us, made
within our swollen balls just for
ceremonious blurrings-over of furiously burning
touch, caresses kept leathered-up, such, I
felt, that to not rot
in one bed together unflowered on
nights we could have the
rest of our lives lived, wall
with pebbles of lies my
unsexed expectations, my fantasies my own

                         v.

phonetic mutations, lyrics flexed Dorian
in outmoded moodiness abrasive as Gray
aluminum scarred against abuses and
manipulations of tongue more unusual, this
confession’s tame comparison notwithstanding, was,
in some sense, sinister as the
blade against the grain, cave
in to temptation enough, partaking of
raping oneself while making the
othered lover your echo, your mirror,

                         vi.

larger than your ego that
you fuck-over fucking-with its diddled double,
its victim appears once woman,
next man, then beast seems, who
you eat as he stares,
each glimpse incremental, tearing successively at
reality’s thin veil Salomé herself
kneels between, thighs astride, borderline as
personalities devolve to disorder if
either of us even sees, she

                         vii.

writhes in tandem, contorts, were
we mortals worth comparison, with petrified
us, our coupling tripled in
an ecstatic instance of oblivion time
recedes to bathe in two
bodies three heresies, at once ladies
and gentlemen blending indecently, sitting
prettily as we surpass alchemy in
transmuting blood to come, umber
to fire, denying kings their chairs.

“Closer to Murder Than to Love”

— Notate Bene: ☞ The poem is a “golden shovel,” a form invented by Terrance Hayes in homage to Gwendolyn Brooks, where the last word of every line in the poem forms a phrase taken from a quotation, often another poem. In this case, Anne Sexton, “The Double Image,” Part 6, Stanza 2, Line 6, Stanza 3, Lines 1–6, and Stanza 4, Lines 1–4 (Lines 12–22 overall of the Part; Lines 171–181 overall of the poem), in Part II of To Bedlam and Part Way Back (1960), in The Complete Poems: With a foreword by Maxine Kumin, published at Boston by Mariner Books in 1999; pages 40–41. The excerpted poem quoted reads, “I had outgrown. // The artist caught us at the turning; / we smiled in our canvas home / before we chose our foreknown separate ways. / The dry red fur fox coat was made for burning. / I rot on the wall, my own Dorian Gray. // And this is the cave of the mirror, / that double woman who stares / at herself, as if she were petrified / in time—two ladies sitting in umber chairs.”