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