The Accomodation of Desire (The Pants Poem)

In all likelihood, they were the ugliest pants I had
ever seen. Something with the soft brush of velvet
but none of the right lay, huge hem with full break.

Repeating from somewhere once, I said “corduroy”
comes from cord du roi, cloth of kings. Obviously, B.S.—
I mean, who the hell ever saw Louis XVI in wools?
I picture him now in the pillory, in Levi’s, with his head
all spent, tumbled pale in the basket like an unripe berry.

I get pale-dry like that when I sleep funny. Those days
always seem so muffled, like a watch wrapped in cotton,
and viscous time contracts like a vein. Just like that, a day
can fold itself into three hours, skim milk in coffee.
The way it falls in on itself, then disperses. Now look,

I’ll be the first to admit: it’s been years since
I truly wanted something. A pair of fuzzy socks
with individual toes, the texture and color of moldy grapes.
So it’s not that I want you, this oil-slicked time, these pants.

More so, I want the feel of it, tight bands of corduroy,
packed like bamboo, Styrofoam-peanut seconds
pressed just-so to the minute, the easy sweep of skin

on skin. The feeling of everything suspended
at once, like how the light seems to honey
in Nan Goldin’s pictures, a looming sense
of awareness coming into a frail body,

like the husband walking in on his wife with the plumber
while John Lennon intones the “Day Tripper” chorus.
It’s such a steamy coincidence that I whip pan to the husband
as the words come down like hail: It took me so long to find out,
and I found out.

In the end, I don’t buy the pants, and nobody bothers
to fix the sink, which is a flood hazard. Which is to say,
nothing happened, and no one cared about it one bit.