Category Archives: Poetry

STARTLED MOUTH

10 Friday Apr 2015

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At the gym the boy in the stall next to

me has, “bipolar,” “lovers,” “medicine”

 

tattooed here and there. I’ve got vindaloo,

rice and curry on my tongue. There’s cotton

 

balls in my pocket, band-aids, a thing – spork?

Something that’s neither fork nor spoon, and yet

 

I can’t throw away. I’ve got stains, all cork

and basque, under my eyes. With comb I wet

 

my hair, smear the steamy mirror. My tube

socks are pulled to my knees. My gym shorts tight.

 

Bazooka Joe gum in one cheek. My words

might mean shame or pride. Startled, the flashcube

 

on your camera goes off. I hate that light,

that shows me exposed, my startled mouth blurred.

WHAT WILL BE LEFT

10 Friday Apr 2015

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Let all the lovers be consumed into

intimacies. Let the interlopers

 

play with robbed muscles and slack sinew.

Let the sea give me all its pink corals,

 

betta fighting fish. I, too, am beta.

The slack sub-boy who has what hunger wants.

 

I, too, have played with a cardboard ouija;

listened to love’s whine, its nails-on-board haunts.

 

I’ve let the outlaws in, they’re so certain

that the fuck that they give is the right one.

 

There’s more plastic in the ocean than sharks;

that is what will be left to our children.

 

And words. And poems. About Hope’s garden.

And Yahweh’s pact. And Rumi’s love dog’s bark.

WHOMEVER

10 Friday Apr 2015

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Pat the bunny, the shadows

are long, sometimes I can’t

 

always find whomever I’m

looking for. Or whoever. I get

 

those mixed up. See, you

were an aunt to me. Though

 

I come from a different womb,

different time, different world,

 

all that you praised is still here,

like this child that you helped

 

raised though you didn’t know

it. Come, feel daddy’s scratchy face.

SPOOKY BIRD

10 Friday Apr 2015

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“Kafé, kasita non kafela et publia filii omnibus suis” — an invocation to allow one to enter someone’s dreams.

Dreams are coming to

the heel just outside,

 

the shadow in my sly-boot

box says so. This, too, is

 

a love poem and like all

brief solutions is already

 

fading. Meanwhile go

nowhere, do nothing.

 

Every motion wasted.

Finger this hole. On my

 

lips a sticky residue: jizz,

junk, slicked back hair.

 

Fleshpot vespers. Spooky

bird. I will enter your dream.

ONE WHO CRACKLES

10 Friday Apr 2015

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Right at the down stroke, with all your weight thrown

behind the blade, my arms raised to avert

 

the stroke, there’s a quick blur, pale like bone,

from two small fists, and the front of your shirt

 

(awkward) implodes. “Witch!” you gurgle; the way

schoolyard bullies splutter when at last laid

 

low. We love our movies about gun-play

but the thought that a girl could dodge a blade

 

or punch a hole through ribs is called bollocks.

Physics baffles us. My rain-reddened fists

 

unflex. I exhale, luster, turn elsewhere.

I tell you of Doc Martins and mohawks –

 

– of a dim slip-of-a-thing with thin wrists;

one who crackles, like dry-ice in the air.

SLICE BONE CRAZY

09 Thursday Apr 2015

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She shows us how to pierce the neck, the shaft

all a quiver in the airway, the man’s

 

eyes still agog. The poor bastard who laughed,

coughed just once and then flopped forward. Her clan’s

 

riders swept through the green cornfields, now flame.

All their arrows rose up and then came down.

 

Gravity, I love you. The sort of fame

she offers in a blood-splattered nightgown

 

is not for me. Poets do not amuse

her. I’m telling this backwards. She can slice

 

bone crazy. She has the mark of Venus

in one eye. Is such violence an excuse

 

to be enamored? Don’t care if the dice

roll tens; I’ll always bet on this princess.

ALL ORANGE GLORY

09 Thursday Apr 2015

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“The bud/ stands for all things” – Galway Kinnell

 

After loss then the libido snaps back

sick and mad as before. I don’t know why.

 

Knuckles push into moss until – hunchbacked,

straining – I pry the bud apart. My thighs

 

soggy sorrow burn all orange glory.

What gods would trust a mouth that makes such Os?

 

Thorny lips … that curl up around all three

of my fingers … a butterfly … that glows

 

when it dips for nectar — No, won’t go on.

What’s wrong? I feel like I’m faking it. Porn

 

on a Thursday. After loss why this brief

horniness? Once my fingers are withdrawn

 

let the bud close, leaving behind thorn,

moss-grown verge and grief. The gods’ own grief.

ALL THE DEAD LITTLE THINGS

09 Thursday Apr 2015

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I love that my fear lives under my bed.

I’ve been down there: torn condoms, used needles,

 

and my left toe-cutting knife. All the dead

little things I’ve loved and abandoned. Skulls

 

that will always be prettier than me.

Loose teeth. I’ve swallowed at least six. The jaw

 

of one Milady de Winter. What she

did — no, spoilers, sweetie. The things that gnaw

 

at me aren’t what you think. The Internet

where I live: “None of us fuck, see? Sex is

 

ugly. None of your free, hippy love shit

here,” as Johnny told Nancy. It’s that threat,

 

you might become mine, I might become his.

Strange how just a floor can become a pit.