Carla was on her break from the

graveyard shift at the mayonnaise factory

She sat at a teetering picnic table,

there was a toxic orange moon

and it was slightly cold

Carla took out her knife and began etching

random words into the table's surface

Then, she thought of her co-worker Jack

Carla liked to think of Jack

as a luscious apparatus

He was meaty but graceful

His flesh seemed folded onto his body

like a suit made of meat

Carla started to think of Jack as a

luscious apparatus in a meat suit

Thinking this gave Carla a dreamy smile

Her mouth was small to begin with

but dreaming made it even smaller

That's just how some people are,

their mouths get smaller with dreams

Carla's small mouth was dreaming

as her knife began carving a poem into the table

I like hot voids, smooth pants, lazy beds in the rain

I like tongue petals, lather, a blistering sun

but what I like best is the worship

of a luscious apparatus



When Carla was done carving

she went back to her work station

and scooped shiny white goop into jars

That's just how some people are,

their mouths get smaller with dreaming



The next day Jack took his own 1am lunch break

at the same picnic table

He noticed the poem carved into the wood

Although he didn't know who had written it,

he coincidentally thought

'Luscious Apparatus' aptly described him

So he took out his own knife and wrote

'luscious apparatus was here'



After a few days both Jack and Carla

happened to sit at the picnic table

at the same time

They both started to look

at the things carved in the table

Then they looked at each other

They knew who each other was

Carla's mouth got small and dreamy,

Jack's eyes got round and hot

When they got done

with the graveyard shift

They went back to Jack's apartment

and had sex

Wordless sex, slow sex,

fast sex, talking sex

Sex like animals have,

sex like boys have, sex like girls have

Sex upside down, sex inside out

Sex with grins, sex with tears

Sex, sex, sex Then she noticed the knife by the side of Jack's bed

Jack picked the knife up And Carla knew at once

that Jack's wounds were from carving himself

Jack was trying to carve poems into himself

and now he wanted to carve some in her

This was where she drew the line

She'd have any kind of sex but not with a knife

When Carla refused to let Jack carve her up,

Jack felt cheated and misled

He felt that by carving a poem in the table

Carla had been begging to be carved upon

Carla didn't see it that way at all

She got up and started putting on her clothes

Jack went nuts, he was coming at her with a knife

Carla was scared, Carla was shaking and sweating

Then, because she was small and could move fast

she ducked and Jack tripped and fell

and impaled himself in the arm with his own knife

He howled and howled and Carla got the hell out of there fast



Carla didn't think of Jack as a luscious apparatus after that