Flamboyant Traffic Lights

did you go to Kentucky?

2010-08-07T13:30:00.001-05:00

last night
I was on the run
in a car I had to turn
like a jack in the box
took it all the way
to Mexico
like that

Essay on Being Inflammatory

2010-03-23T13:01:00.000-06:00

he probably did cut off the ears. what you’re saying
is we all cut off the ears. but we enjoyed the country.
all of the places to drink wine. like a film. his wife’s
shuttles. steady, carrying wrists. umbrellas of tarts.
isn’t it like the films? trace the orders back. find the
bad, bad boys with telegrams. what you’re saying is
we can’t be held accountable, los campesinos. we are
benefitting in not being naked. doing the best we can.

Essay on Unicorn

2010-01-25T19:15:00.000-06:00

when a unicorn goes into the snow. she is less sure how to be.
involved with something as cold as her own magic. as white as
her own white. here, she is addicted to her echoes in the landscape.
uglied by her own affections.

she is looking for candy. peppermint caves & dancing. she wants
to react. stuff to make her stomach sick. sweet, natural things.
a break in the grass. a mystery that grows up from the vines.
but it’s a lot, to have hooves. they burn like cavities in the cold.

to go home is a big mirror. breakfast tastes like dinner.
where the unicorn is as weird as ever & her bed never grows.
we want nothing more than to touch you. the mountains say.
she is out now, a piece of wind.

a little fairy tale

2010-01-15T18:46:00.000-06:00

I’m too small to be famous
don’t stand next to me –

ever

this heart will have to be enough
somewhere along the line
records are things I like
because every time you love one
it works a little less
& next time, you won’t wonder
why things work differently now

BOSH

2009-11-14T23:13:00.000-06:00

Still,

I’m looking really good
down here

Under the fluorescents
the afternoon sun
& my bed lamp

I bet you’re jealous
crazy jealous

it’s unnatural
to be this good looking
I know

I am Sad

2009-11-10T01:47:00.001-06:00

even as I say it
no one believes me

without tears
I am just a boy

haikus

2009-11-09T12:43:00.001-06:00

nontraditional

Baton Rouge

let the sun have
its five minutes of set
tomorrow
we’ll try again

Making Out

close your eyes
all our faces
look stupid between kisses

traditional

Apartment

it’s nice not to be
the only living thing here
the bamboo, the fish

Train

the difference between
grass on all sides & your bed
is twenty more hours

Different Voice Exercise on Little Samuel with Photograph

2009-11-02T14:03:00.001-06:00

Momma said my Cherokee blood made me born with feet like leather. I walked the six blocks of black tar to school in my bare Cherokee feet. I had the nicest shoes in Baton Rouge. One day, my Momma quit her job at the factory, purchased three white mannequins in Negro wigs and decided to cut hair. It took a year for the city to forgive her for the first year of uneven haircuts, but my Momma had a habit at becoming the best at everything she did. Soon the governor’s wife was knocking on our shed, where we kept the shop behind the house. My Momma had a habit of keeping her business separate from her family, but when I turned nine she let me sweep the hair up off the shed.

That’s how I met Dolly Sherwood, one afternoon when my little brother had the flu and the doctor’s said he might die.
“Ma’am,” I told to Dolly when I saw her car pull up. “My little brother’s real sick with the flu and doctor’s said he might die. My Momma’s closed the shop until Jesus make him better or Jesus make him worse.” Dolly Sherwood was looking at my shoes. I told her my name was Samuel because she asked. “You have the shiniest shoes in Baton Rouge Samuel. Get in the backseat.” I didn’t know Dolly Sherwood but it seemed rude not to listen to someone with so much power and influence and so my political career began in the backseat with Dolly Sherwood and her magazines. “Driver, to the State Capital building s’il vous plait.” She shook my hand, “That’s how you say please in French, Samuel. I’m Dolly Sherwood. Now say enchanté to let me know you’re glad to have met me.”

japanese rock poem

2009-10-28T22:00:00.001-06:00

"I saw you first in the cattails"

& "you are it

not because you're dirty

not because you're clean"

for once don't spill

"I still consider myself very likable"

Process

2009-10-16T23:24:00.000-05:00

I’m stood up. I’m made the bed, ate the toast, I’m
upset the birds, can I write now? I’m ten. I’m twelve
can I write now? I’m walked the mile there & back
listened, held hands, made a comment, stirred, saw,
made a comment, I’m fell down. I’m not a hero. I’m
walked the mile there & back, I’m talked to, her. him.
outside, showered, can I write now? I’m goosebumps,
I’m sweater, I’m Illinois, I’m chicken, can I write now?
mother, father, brother, friend can I write now? I’m
thereabouts, logged into, flipped the record, can I write
now? I’m cereal, bottom of a land, nine, ten, eleven
clocks, I’m a better mood, I’m done, accepted, swiveled,
I’m coffee, I’m who are you, full, frizzy, ate the toast,
outside, upset the birds, can I write now?

Radish Sparklers (Revised & Expanded)

2009-10-12T12:25:00.005-05:00

The packet of radish seeds stayed in the knife drawer. Every time I went to chop something, they shook like a pair of maracas. The seeds asked me to stop. Or at least throw us away! the seeds complained. Or plant us, I added. I could always plant the Radish sparklers.

There are a dozen other objects she left in the house: the glasses kit, I don’t wear glasses, the cheesy eighties records, she had terrible taste in music, the subscription to garden magazine, I don’t plant things. Eventually, I gave the glasses kit to my friend Charlie, sold the records, with the exception of one, and let the subscription run out, but the Radish sparklers rattled on. Every yank on the sticky drawer put the seeds into motion. When the earthquake hit last winter and the pictures fell off the wall, it was the seeds in the drawer that woke me. They shivered until morning.

There are people you get involved with and never expect it to last. Your split won’t be the tragedy you hoped for. You’ll think, shouldn’t I be doing something awful? Walking there alone, or eating ice cream? It’s never really sad. Only a little quiet at first. Then everything returns to normal. You go back to your computer and call your parents more than you’d like to. When did they start having more fun?

We were in the checkout line when she spotted the seeds. “I haven’t seen these since San Francisco,” she said tossing them into the cart. Everything was about San Francisco with her.

“I haven’t seen those ever,” I said tossing them out of the cart.

“What do you care?” she said tossing them back into the cart.

They were at home when she left them on the counter. “I’ll plant them tomorrow,” she said to no one. When tomorrow came it was raining so I put the seeds in the knife drawer and we both forgot we loved each other.

There are ones who leave and you think, I’ll find them again in New York! or somewhere bright when you both know more. When the timing is better. They won’t do that terrible thing they do anymore, and you won’t ruin the holidays. The two of you will get lunch and do the rehearsed goodbye hug, but the hug will turn into everything you sat on like a suitcase that wouldn’t shut. Everything will turn into your familiar sexual clumsiness and finally, you can both quit your jobs and move to that dry town in the mountains.

A fantasy of reconnect can go on forever. It can’t be stopped.

She called to tell about the new house and the new wedding. I sounded healthy on the phone. I mean I didn’t mention the seeds. She phoned in the late morning, or what she refers to as “responsible time.” The “responsible time” starts around ten o’clock. During this time she would exercise, go to the post office, and fall for someone else while I was still in my pajamas.

I read the description on the radish packaging out loud to no one, “ A nearly rounded Radish, bright scarlet at the top and bright white underneath. Very crisp and tender with a mild flavor.” I grabbed a shovel and started digging a hole. I read the directions. Dig a hole for each seed? I dug several holes. I was sure they wouldn’t grow because they were never meant to be planted. They belong in the drawer next to the knives.

A week later, tiny green haircuts appeared in the soil. I chased rabbits away with the shovel. I installed a small white fence. When it didn’t rain, I watered their red foreheads. I found recipes in cookbooks I didn’t know I had. One morning I woke up and knew they were married forever. I made a salad. I invited Charlie over for drinks. He said he hadn’t seen Radish sparklers since San Francisco.

Jordan Soyka's Reworking of my Poetic Manifesto Read at Teddy's Juke Joint 10.7.09

2009-10-11T19:30:00.002-05:00

Mel’s Manifesto

The girl in the black raincoat, wild & written, looks cute with her haircut. Her pockets are in Chicago and her hands are all my friends. Her hands are getting older. Her friends are getting naked.

2009-10-04T23:06:00.000-05:00

I will not be
this age again

& despite
emptiness

i’m held

Mexico Forever

2009-10-04T22:49:00.000-05:00

The gun wasn’t so bad. I thought either this person is going to shoot me, or they won’t. The simplicity of outcomes. Tomorrow or no tomorrow.

My bank training tells me the typical robber, once in the getaway car, will hide in an unlikely location for a number of weeks, or drive to Mexico forever. That morning I touched a lot of money. More than my job as a bank teller usually requires. I put it all into the bag. I put so much in the bag the robber couldn’t lift it. This would only be funny as we were crossing the border.

After a failed robbery, the robber will either head to the nearest bar, or return home to plot their next robbery. I was given a pink slip and ordered to receive a psychic evaluation from the clinic down the street and return after lunch. I decided instead, never to return.

I found her at the nearest bar, slumped over the table. The simplicity of outcomes. Without the ski mask, she was beautiful. “You,” she said casually when she realized I recognized her. Instead of running, she raised her drink. “You,” I said and met her glass.

“There was a lot of money in that bag.” I told her. She nodded at her mistake. “My bank training tells me a robber has twenty seconds to get the money and get out if everyone follows protocol,” I told her. She nodded again absently. I grabbed her hand. “I didn’t follow protocol,” I said. She looked up suddenly with those blue eyes that once again saw the possibility of money. The simplicity of outcomes. Mexico forever.

2009-09-28T10:17:00.001-05:00

switch

I am a princess with taffy going along by the pull.

A littler boy than me catches fire. Who doesn’t know

he is ugly like I know he is ugly. Like one big owie.

Making himself dizzy in the yard like I did once.

The salute of a child.

switch

Day breaks & the moon

& sun act on everything.

A tide of cars washes up.

I will put my arms

around the one I want.

switch

Moving in white corn at the bottom of a planet

really sucks without you.

We were so good at going.

The act of pushing our bodies

from Paris to the south.

This & that was so down the road.

When you wander I wander.

switch

I will not believe the growth of my ears.

Talking to white corn & the littler burnt boy.

Only then I remember the song in my dreams

& know I loved by what I chose.

The Impossible Book Story

2009-09-22T22:10:00.001-05:00

this tiny book really has nothing to do with your heart
so don’t get all, like, how you get

I don’t love you yet, chicken

but this tiny book really is close to your heart
like butterfly eyelashes around your neck
like a library sandwich between your boobies
at least its around that general heart area
I saw it!

so I’m going all, like,
left to right
left to right
like how I usually read stuff
thinking this is a really good book

that has nothing to do with your heart
so I won’t get all, like, how I get
there’s going to be a beginning,
middle, & end
reality has never been our problem

2009-09-13T22:04:00.001-05:00

before I go
I will sharpen all my crayons
the old green, the old brown
we don’t have those flowers anymore
or those neighbors
I heard of this bungalow
smelling of weather days
child air, child parents
a summer that is Chicago
mayonnaise

2009-09-13T21:54:00.001-05:00

a shoe a rock a table a chair

I feel good about these things

little river poem

2009-09-08T14:50:00.001-05:00

time your blue mud sang a solo in hearts

the city falls for you leftover going night

people like faucets over gummy time little

river of cold linen buckle today here comes

a house with a daddy a car with a mommy

people look into your glug those incredible

incredibles but your blue got brown & fish

got dead & some bridge looks silly without

you

Manifesto of Natural History

2009-09-02T12:46:00.001-05:00

generally, we are getting older in a young space.

poetry exists in teaching because first I was there & now I am here.

the questioning-people will want poets to be sure of things, but we are not sure of everything.

please remain surprised & a little gay.

the girl in a black raincoat will enter the writing space. everything I do will exist in her pockets for a long time.

people turn the lights on & the sound on. I know I did a poet thing.

more friends get naked. how does the perfect poem lie? the perfect poem lies by telling the truth. how does the perfect poem make perfect poem love? the perfect poem makes perfect poem love by taking the dare. spin the bottle is also fun.

walt whitman, gertrude stein, tristan tzara, orhan veli, gabriel gudding, jennifer knox, jack spicer, harryette mullen, aimé césaire, richard brautigan, aram saroyan, & they are wild & they are good.

all poems are written for a mother in chicago. she calls to tell me, write a good poem about the poodle who just got her haircut. write about how she looks cute with her haircut. the woman at the haircut place raised the prices. your haircuts never cost that much. are you writing this down?

all my friends have names & I love their names & how they did or did not get them or how they did get into a poem.

the poet is already touching the thing without touching it. in a poet’s hand appears a beautiful thing like a bird made in clay.

the poet does not have to think to write poetry but sometimes it helps, to go behind, to assess the ritual.

when a poet asks why do I write? a poet should remind the heart because a poet is good at it. or really, really bad at it.

2009-08-30T23:51:00.005-05:00

when my friend calls about boys on balconies, when she throws down her hair how we fall in love, when my friend tells me the story of music, how he’s getting older & I was there too, how the girl I used to love is happy & my Father travels & my Mother misses us & my Brother is in theater! when I ride my bike to a girl’s with wine to make pizza & she’s pretty using her hands, how my friend meets me for coffee in silly hats & we write, how I am having pancakes in the beautiful home of my friend on saturday, how there are so many tomatoes in the south & the girls wear sundresses in afternoons that last all day, into the next day, where I am twenty-three all year & there is beer in the fridge

2009-08-27T13:03:00.004-05:00

we are not gods
when light attacks a sunday
we cannot go home
yesterday

2009-08-27T13:03:00.001-05:00

I did okay
I ate my grapes

2009-08-24T21:09:00.001-05:00

what else can I do?
but leave the coffeehouse
& go back?

2009-08-24T21:07:00.001-05:00

the end of summer handholding people are out
if september & the chill
will have them

2009-08-10T11:08:00.004-05:00

the migrant pirate has been shot. show me where says the black baby angel. on the goddamn eye. careful says the black baby angel the devil and god are both gods. call for one in vain and the other answers in your nightmares. the migrant pirate apologizes for his vanity by feeling cold and the black baby angel wraps him in her own clouds for sacrifice. the black baby angel loses her train of thought so a train is a humid spine between places while the migrant pirate collects wrist bands from the bars he drinks among giving him a long thirsty arm. they are not in love. he says no one alive is older than a train and the black baby angel says no one dead is unromantic so now all people fade into other people so don’t miss bad habits. the migrant pirate leans back and shivers as the trees take into Louisiana.

A Serious Poem for Serious People

2009-07-28T12:41:00.002-05:00

we bury our heads in the sand
   to make ostrich love
like spoons through soup
with no sense of soup
like lamps in quicksand
poets will be everything
that go into everything
taken from each other
   I saw a seagull!
   & you beneath a leaf
the beach horizon is percussion
   the breeze is enough
& someone up there
swipes a tablecloth of light
   out from the earth
until the moon is all
next to the buffalo rags of a boy
is his dress
warriors toss shells over my head
tiny mammals fall as souvenirs
go into our notebooks as flowers
something for tomorrow
I touched you
until you became my sister
& I had to go home

2009-07-21T13:34:00.003-05:00

this was her who first drove me crazy in my brain in my bed and hoped her would talk to me maybe and then her did and I hoped her would talk to me more and when her talked to me more I hoped her would talk to me more and when her talked to me more I hoped I would see her more and when I saw her more I wanted to see more and when I saw more I hoped her would stay and when her stayed I hope her would stay longer and when her stayed longer I hoped I could stay longer and when I stayed longer I couldn’t stay longer when I couldn’t stay longer I hoped her would still stay and when we couldn't stay we drove each other crazy in our brains in our beds and I hoped that was okay and when it was okay it stopped being okay and I still hoped her would stay and when I couldn't stay we still stayed and when we couldn't stay we still stayed more and when I left we still drove each other crazy in our brains in our beds and when we couldn't see we still talked and when we couldn't see we talked more and when we talked more I hoped her would talk to me more maybe and when we couldn’t talk more we talked less and when we talked less I still hoped we could talk and when we couldn’t talk this was her who first drove me crazy in my brain in my bed

manatee

2009-07-19T19:31:00.000-05:00

stop before you get hurt
the ocean is bigger than you
& your heart is bigger than the world

2009-07-16T23:51:00.001-05:00

today I almost saw Tracey’s smile
I mean boob
while she was sweeping the old floors
chez dupree
we talk about our Nadja
who draws surprising butterflies
how she isn’t crazy but the world is
okay, she’s a little crazy but the world is
full of places like Paris
like the 20th century
I could take photographs
when all writers were French
bumping into Nadjas at the café
with wild hair & armpits
will the squishy Americans
know what to do with her tears?

New Orleans

2009-07-15T13:40:00.001-05:00

killed it on a Monday night in July
in the way some writers never sit down to write
& some musicians never play
she was beautiful in this way & so many others
a city that faces the people

MAGICAL BEASTS

2009-07-10T14:17:00.001-05:00

the magical beast who lives in Wisconsin
believes in tiny practicing gods
who take shape in the frozen river, dairy cows
& leaves stuck on leaves
she preaches on birch cliffs
to river cliffs
around the echoes of hikers
who have shame for their cold tomatoes
her icy fur keeps the river warm
& the tiny gods practice their moves
in the snow

consulting

2009-07-08T14:24:00.000-05:00

everybody’s everybody
is not your everybody
for our kind of experts
who are the kind of consults
made happy by green pens
& most everything
put into our hands
can be used again

Two Tadpoles in Iowa

2009-07-05T17:33:00.001-05:00

please come home to the ye olde pond
said the tadpole to her tadpole lover
I want a divorce
before we redo the master bathroom
or install another fan

if we could just touch everything & have it feel good
things would be better said her tadpole lover

the tadpole felt they were no longer talking about the divorce thing
& wanted to leave Iowa
if we could just go crazy like we did when we were sane

it’s true they were lovers said the voice in the sky
it’s true that most tadpoles are stoic
but most false statements begin with the word “most”
to try & mislead the stoics

please don’t move to Colorado
said the tadpole lover
I hate to see you go

2009-07-04T14:42:00.001-05:00

seven is seven
without the romantic crickets
at five
god & the devil
are both the same

2009-07-01T16:34:00.001-05:00

summer came in boobies
unarranged in a daisy
of she loves me
like an outdoor cat
with possibilities
or free range chickens
who all go to the slaughterhouse
but first a little sunlight

the best

2009-06-30T14:56:00.000-05:00

floated down the river in a paperhat
folded into a diamond
folded into a triangle
then two diamonds kissing
into a boat
sent by a girl who just learned how to fold paperhats
because her father was a good man
it happened around breakfast
in the way poems get away with things
smaller than books
in the way the idea of the best
is not better than a paperhat
which is just the very best
sent by a girl who kept having birthdays
one after the next
because she was a girl wild with life
floating down the river in a paperhat
against her father’s wishes to stop time
because he was a good man
folding time around breakfast
in the way time gets away with things
smaller than a poem
into a diamond then a triangle

2009-06-23T13:07:00.001-05:00

so many
tiny angles
to my ow.

2009-06-22T20:19:00.001-05:00

a girl died in Iran today
I watched her

on the cement
father tell her
stay awake
don’t be afraid
but she was tired
of things like this.

Missed Connection: You Dance as Abby

2009-06-16T19:58:00.001-05:00

you dance as Abby in the doorway the curtains hate to close on your evening white is the absence of Abby you were all but yellow heels about an inch tall & your glitter in another life did you dance for a mirror & not a circle of men I came for your movement every Saturday this was Saturday January 5th I sit on the left not stage left but my left the table with faces I am 44 you look younger handsome the son of a doctor but I am not a doctor not poor either miserable with black hair a little gray like Clooney with a broken nose remember my green tie & tall we are the same height I noticed I don’t usually do these things but what the hell I followed you out only white ankles New York is cold you were in front of me I was toward you I was walking in back of the yellow heels you were checking your voicemail on an old slider Hello I quivered into your black gloves holding a key unsurprised your makeup gone I think your eyes are blue New York is cold who are you? & you shiver I dance as Abby got into your car I scared you I’m sorry you drove toward main street going north in a silver ford with a license plate full of numbers you forgot your turn signal but I never got your real name?

aux neighbor

2009-06-14T14:31:00.000-05:00

do not think your chair is lost
i borrowed it to sit & write.
the kitchen knife too.
waiting for the postman
to bring me letters. I wanted
coffee but it got too late in the
day so I wanted a soda. the
sound opening. I watch you
post pictures of your cat
on the internet.

2009-06-07T21:48:00.001-05:00

cricket
gummy bear

Poem by DeWitt Brinson

2009-05-06T17:07:00.001-05:00

To MyL

My Fluless
Mot Fullness
Mellifluous

Mellon
May’s Lone
Million
Mel Lions

Might Die On This

May’s Own Mellifluous Millions
March On My Lone Mel
My Lion Fruit

Written for Mel Coyle with the utmost affection by her enamored friend DeWitt Brinson on this the 3rd week of April in the two-thousandth and ninth year.

Riding on the City of New Orleans

2009-05-04T13:17:00.003-05:00

Anabasis

Baton Rouge, la

A few months earlier, a man on the bus shook his cock at me. I saw him behind me between the seats. There were five other men on the bus, not including the man driving and the man security guard with a gun strapped to his thigh. My girlfriend J. continued her story like there wasn’t a man jerking his cock. She had not seen him yet. I tried to focus on her story. The hand moved faster over the cock. Some story about a student and her thesis defense. “That isn’t right,” I said shaking my head. Ignore the cock. A story of ethics. I would not draw her attention to the moving faster hand over the cock. Protect her. I was doing it. The masculine thing. I would not let her see that men did this. White girls of the north girls, small girls white and with too much luggage. Protect her. The man with the cock stood up. He moved up the aisle closer to us. He took a seat inches from her, inches from me, talking about a student and her thesis defense. No one noticed. The security guard sat behind the driver staring into a portable DVD player. A horror film. I was alert. Protect her. “Stop talking,” I demanded to J.

“What?” she said.

“Stop talking. I’m going to ask you to stand up.”

“Why?”

“We’re moving to the front. Now.” She stood up. Protect her.

I didn’t look at the man with the cock’s face. We just walked as fast as we could to the front and sat down behind the security guard who turned around and held up a DVD. “Have you seen this film?” I didn’t tell him what I saw.

New Orleans, la

The cheapest way from Baton Rouge to New Orleans is the LA Swift. The bus ride costs five dollars but you get on at Florida and 22nd. Not the best neighborhood. The reader should know the writer means the neighborhood is black and the houses facing the station have crooked venetian filthy blinds.

A few months earlier, a man on the bus shook his cock at me and my girlfriend. Then girlfriend. This time I am alone. I gather my bags closely on the bus, but am relived that the bus is mostly full of women in work uniforms. One next to me is tossing sunflower seeds into her mouth. I can hear the crack of the shell through my headphones.

The driver hears it too. “Who makin’ that crackin’ back there?”

“ME,” says the cracking girl.

“Well ME better quit crackin’ or ME will be off the bus,” says the angry driver.

“You a rude ass!” the cracking woman is yelling. Your ass is rude! Ain’ he rude?” she asks me.

“Yeah, that was pretty rude.” I say. We laugh. She likes the shirt I’m wearing that has the Morton salt girl holding an umbrella. I relax.

I get off the bus and fumble with my bags at the street corner, flushed, and caught off guard by the wind gusts off the gulf, off Lake Pontchartrain. I can barely stand. The writer would like the reader to know her bags are too heavy and needs help. A big man walks up with gold teeth and asks, “Do you need help?”

“No thanks. I just have to catch my bearings.” The wind took my face. His teeth are all gold.

“Your what?” he asks.

“My bearings?” it becomes a question.

“Oh,” he says.

Conrad Albrizio painted the mural inside the New Orleans’ Union Station. Otherwise the large room with high ceilings is nothing special. Albrizio painted some murals at the university I attend, but I never really looked at them. I have three hours before the train called the City of New Orleans arrives. I really look at Albrizio’s mural. People inside the passenger terminal divide themselves at great lengths. The direction of chairs systematically divides the passengers. There are two great rows of uncomfortable plastic orange chairs and each pair of rows are facing away from the other, so that if a person sat behind me our backs would touch, and that is why no one ever chooses a seat behind another person. I assign myself a seat nine seats away from the closest person. I realize it is the man with all gold teeth who is rubbing a stick of women’s deodorant all over his body. The scent is powder fresh. I used to wear it. Now everyone is facing away from the nearest person staring into their own private space. This is common sense. I am staring at Albrizio’s mural. The slaves with heavy shovels and the Native Americans with angular faces staring with suspicion at a ship full of colonial men with straight backs. All the women are yelling with their hands on their cheeks like Munch’s “The Scream” painting. The fields turn into corn and then into slaves and then into cotton and then into factories but the faces of the people never change. The suspicions never leave. It is common sense not to look up at history. A little boy with blonde hair rolls his army tank across the tile making machine gun noises with his tongue. He is in the jungle. The little soldiers in his hand are dying. “Oh no! Get out!” the little soldiers squeak. “Quit bein’ stupid and sit in your chair,” his mother yanks him by the collar. When the little boy with blonde hair hides behind the vending machines I see him laughing. His mother panics. I let her panic for ten seconds 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 then, “Excuse me ma’am. Your boy is hiding over there.” She yanks him by the collar. She is raising a boy in the jungle, a man. The American man is forever the American boy.

I take a seat inside Subway. A few men working make me aware I have a vagina between my legs. They wink, whistle. My vagina gapes. It is so big, so gaping things start falling into it like sandwiches. Watches. Straws. The jukebox machine falls into my vagina. Neon signs. Bell peppers. The little boy with blonde hair. Receipts. An elderly woman’s electronic poker. Plastic orange chairs. Shoelaces. Luggage. Albrizio’s mural. The man who fills the vending machine winks. Both fall into my vagina.

Hammond, la

A gorgeous Australian backpacker sits in front of me with a light blonde beard and throws his chair into the reclining position without warning. What an asshole. What a gorgeous asshole. He immediately gets on the phone to call a buddy.

“Oh you wouldn’t believe New Orleans! Yeah, yeah man I did it all. No man, it’s not like Vegas. It’s a hot mess here mate you wouldn’t believe how much fun. I learned all about African American culture! Have you heard of Tupac? Yeah, shot in Vegas actually. A guy named Biggie Smalls. I know it’s grand!” Everybody on the train is forced to listen to the gorgeous asshole. The writer would like the reader to know everybody, means everybody black is staring.

Hazlehurst, ms

The towns we pass have hardware stores, general stores, a barber shop and a church at the core. Someone is rocking on their wraparound with a cigarette. His hands are in his lap yesterday, tomorrow and right now he is rocking. His white linen shirt stifles his chest and the air is so heavy with moisture that only his house and porch are postponing the thick air from collapsing the roof into the kitchen where his wife fans her brow. The old man’s house is dying around him with his hands in his lap. The Southern home a tender home. The wood structure stays wet to touch. Blackgreen mold lives and crawls on the outside and it doesn’t just go away. It rots. The loud speaker would like the writer to know to leave her shoes on at all times. For her own safety.

Jackson, ms

I text J. “I am in Jackson and can’t wait.” The reader should know the writer is pulling the reader in close to her. Always J. The reader should know the writer is distracted from love. There is a Penny Lane. I look how J. thinks I look good. Keep her from wanting me. Nobody hurts her like I do. Let J. want me. She returns my text. “No penises yet? Good sign.” The conductor is pointing at me and the gorgeous asshole. “Move your bags to the floor. We’re going to have a full train in Memphis.” The reader should know there is a Penny Lane. A poet in the beer light. She has everything she needs she’s an artist she don’t look back. A rare bird. I am too sweet for rock n’ roll. The writer would like you do know she is pulling you in too close. That she confessed. I’ll get older.

Yazoo City, mi

I am the whistle. I hear it in bed. The bark of a neighbor’s dog, sirens, students home from a kegger, loud and mean. Noises that make people lonely in their beds. A reminder. A night sigh. I am the whistle. I mean I am the passenger in the belly of the sigh. The choo-choo…

Newbern, tn

2:30 a.m. The conductor is yelling at the gorgeous asshole. “I asked you to move your bags three hours ago!” The gorgeous asshole mumbles something in his sleep and shifts his weighty backpacking gear. Barely. A three hundred pound woman takes her seat next to me. So large that it is impossible for our bodies not to be touching. I acknowledge her with a sleepy nod. 3:00 a.m. The gorgeous asshole is yelling. The writer would like reader to know that the conductor is black like Samuel J. Jackson and the Australian is white like Mel Gibson.

Mel Gibson

You’re not listening to me. Just listen-

Samuel L. Jackson

You don’t seem to realize I don’t have to listen to you.

Mel Gibson

Why would a man wake a sleeping man? I just got comfor-

Samuel L. Jackson

Cause you paid for one seat. You get one seat. The train is full. i told you that three hours ago.

Mel Gibson stands up, enters the aisle and tries to physically intimate Samuel J. Jackson.

Samuel L. Jackson

SIR I’M GONNA ASK YOU TO SIT DOWN RIGHT NOW.

Mel Gibson

Let me ask you-I just don’t get you man. There are fifteen empty seats on this train and you put someone next to me.

Mel Gibson points at the thin chic looking black woman in the seat next to his backpack. The full train of passengers is awake and watching the scene unfold including a horrified twenty-something white girl who was previously asleep.

Samuel L. Jackson

DO YOU GET THAT YOU’RE ABOUT TO GET LEFT SOMEWHERE BETWEEN NEWBERN AND CHICAGO? CAN YOU GET THAT SIR? SEE THAT GIRL? I ASKED HER TO MOVE HER STUFF THREE HOURS AGO AND SHE MOVED IT. SEE WHY WE DON’T HAVE A PROBLEM?

Mel Gibson

But-

Samuel L. Jackson (cont’d)

AND LOOK AT THE ONE THAT SAT DOWN NEXT TO HER.

Samuel L. Jackson points at the 300lb black woman. Points out her body in the gaze of other bodies. Her thick waist is convex to the twenty-something girl’s concave. Samuel L. Jackson is forcing the train to look at her fat. The twenty-something girl is horrified at both men but too ashamed to look at the woman sitting beside her.

Twenty-something girl to Mel Gibson

(simple and direct)

Sit down.

Carbondale, il

When I wake up everything outside my window looks like home around the unglacilated tip of Illinois. The woman is no longer next to me. The swamps have hardened into frozen cornfield patches that divide the countryside. The Midwest is wide as the sky high. From a plane the grids look like a great quilt of green, some greener, some yellow, or brown but from the train I am able to see the farmhouse guarding each quilted square and the bicycles leaning on the porch. A body just knows its home. When Mom and I took trips she always said, “It’s so beautiful.” I’d take off my headphones for her. Let her Led Zeppelin enter my earspace.

“Do you see it?” she asks. This is what it feels like to be old. Cornfields and Led Zeppelin. So I would pretend we were running away from our city block to start over with new names in the country. I first heard “Going to California.” I thought for sure I knew what the song was about. I won’t miss anyone.

Katabasis

Champaign-Urbana, il

To say goodbye is to die a little. The last of her blue hat. She is your favorite record with a scratch. You heard so many times you anticipate the skip. Here it comes. You are comforted. See that person with the suitcase is someone coming back. The faces look the same. A Grandma gets up to leave and her grandson runs after her.

“Little Baby it’s goodbye for a little while.” He is returned to his father’s lap. The station in Champaign-Urbana is new. Nothing spooks its walls. The floor is carpet. The record skips.

Effingham, il

The night train. The conductor puts the lights off to trick your body into sleeping. Usually, it takes me hours to doze but I am a child in the backseat whose safe Mother is driving listening to “Hotel California.” I am running away with Mom again. New life. New names. The writer would like the reader to know she won’t miss anyone. J. stopped kissing into me. Now I never knew her mouth. We give things up for things. One smell of the South will delete this.

Winona, ms

When the swamps come back that feels okay too. I immediately need coffee. I open up the foil of my poptart and see it hasn’t survived. Crumbs fall into my palm. shit. I sleepwalk to the food cart where I imagine the usual sleepy bodies swaying while they wait for the kiosk to open with cereals and coffee. Instead, I stumble into a cart full of laughing drunks. I nearly fall over.

“Baby take a seat right here!” a young black man points across from him. I have my homework in one hand and a broken poptart in the other. For a second, I think of running back to my seat but what the hell. why not? The young man immediately snatches my homework pages. Long articles. Twenty, thirty stapled weakly pages.

“You in school?” He flips through the pages and sees the word Harvard. “HAAAHHHHVAD,” he mouths loudly. His can of Budlight almost loses his balance. I realize these people started drinking last night and continued well into the morning. I was in the wrong part of the train.

“Maestro” he extends his hand. We shake.

A woman at the table over orders a Jim Bean. A man leans over her wearing a knit Obama hat.

“Baby let me get that for you. Put your money away. Baby when you gonna call me?” The woman introduces herself as Pearly. Her teeth are covered in pearls. The man with the Obama hat is T. I tell Maestro I’m from Chicago.

“Which parts?”

“My parents live in Beverly.” He laughs. “Oh where the rich folks is. That’s gonna be me one day. You know what I want? Liquor, a hot wife and tons of money. And a servant that just runs my money bags around. I’ma business man.” He holds out the “z” in bizzzzzness.

“I’m gonna have all this money for my wife. Cause you know, dey need money too. Not just cookin’ and cleanin. They like to do their own thing now and then.”

“No, they just like to cook and clean,” I say but he doesn’t catch my sarcasm and finishes his beer.

“You got any babies? Good, wait on that. You got your school.”

“Don’t have to worry about that anytime soon,” I tell him. Our conversation catches the attention of a small town white man with a goatee. Maestro launches into a polemic against fat wives. “You gotta keep your woman thin! You can’t be takin’ an oversized woman to the club. Everyone be laughin’ at you.” Maestro asks Goatee man about his wife.

“No problems with my wife,” he passes around his cell phone with a picture. Her cleavage is at the forefront and she’s wearing a lot of makeup.

“Pretty,” I say.

“Yeah, you just have to find someone you’re crazy about. Cause Maestro doesn’t know it yet. You’re gonna take your fat woman to the club anyway and love her the same.”

Maestro looks hurt, “It ain’ easy to find a wife in the south. Most girls want to go around drunk all day off their asses not working. I already got a baby mama. But when I find the one I’ma ditch all that nonsense.” I’m surprised but I don’t show it. Maestro is a father? He changes the conversation. “You visit New Orleans?”

I tell him last time I visited I got a terrible flu. “God is punishing those people,” he tells me, “They got twelve year olds on crack. The South didn’t used to be like that. I ask my sister what happen to all the farms? They sold and the real southerners gone to hickville. At least you tryin’ something with your life. And you gonna want a man who’s doin’ somethin’ wit his. You gotta have lots of babies. Many of these kids down here gettin’ kilt on their windows. Women dyin’. It’s goin bad.”

Maestro and I deal with our different versions of New Orleans. Babies dying? I tell him my degree is pretty useless anyway. He watches me write a few things down. The writer would like the reader to know she is the enemy.

Our conversation is interrupted with the smell of burnt rubber. A man comes over on the loudspeaker to tell us we’ll be stopped for awhile. A woman from the back bursts into the food cart, “I saw it! We hit a car! The wheels blew out into the road. It’s going to be awhile…” We collectively sigh.

Crystal Springs, ms

some people on the train saw the car wheels scatter from its frame like the car filled with air & blew the tires into the swamp. i felt nothing. it was like hitting a mosquito. why do I assume it’s a man? a woman gives her brains back to the buttons & knobs that hurt her. she wouldn’t do it here. but heard the conductor over the loudspeaker remain outside Crystal Springs for some time. some time. when before, thirty minutes before, a man sat in his car on the tracks with his foot on the go. & our time was coming in the train & his time was sitting in the car. & our time was coming in the train & his time was sitting in the car. his focus on the shiny parts. the shiny parts were because he ran his palm across the wheel too much. he ran his palm across the wheel. he ran his palm across the wheel again like every morning. he couldn’t make any morning now. now he would. no agency. but to sit. i will sit here & let time act on me. let the time act on me. & our time was coming in the train. & the smell of burnt rubber.

Hammond, la

Out my window it looks hot and swampy. I’m still wearing my winter jacket and sweatshirt. Every swamp tree sits on its own island of root. The man with the goatee tells me my route from New Orleans to Baton Rouge is about an hour out of my way. He can give me a ride from Hammond. I politely decline. A scene of me piling into the van with the large tank topped breasts and big makeup, with their two children thumbing away on their Nintendo crosses my mind. I see cold fries under the seats and greasy toys in the cup holders. It’s another thing to split the country with steel. All our bodies pout to go home. The ones carrying secret hearts between one place and another place to occupy what’s weird and stationary, so the train is a great unifying force that divides us. Throwing it all beneath the train. One smell of the South will delete this.

Werm

2009-03-30T20:38:00.005-06:00

At the peak of the Chicago summer, the memory of my parents feels young, both in their early thirties had a youthful reluctance to turning on the air conditioning wall unit and so the four of us suffered in the upwards ninety degree heat. My father just painted our front door red and the new shade took in the sun. I complained the new door was hotter to touch, though I cannot remember what color it was before. Maybe brown.

My parents were always advising me to play in traffic, especially if I hung around the house too much. My mother would have long conversations on the phone with her girlfriends, and would tap the phone cord against the kitchen table she sat in while she drank iced tea, laughing the laugh she reserved for her friends, sometimes painting her nails or drawing little faces on the catalogue people. Looking up from her business she would notice I was watching her and snap, “What are you doing inside? Go play in traffic. It’s gorgeous outside.”

She was probably right. I decided to organize a picnic in the backyard. “I’ll call you outside when it’s all ready Mom,” I told her as a I happily gathered random materials: shoelaces, water bottles, my favorite books, walkie-talkies. “Are you going to bring all that stuff back inside? Last time you left the ketchup out there were had to throw it out.”

With all intent to do right, I gathered the picnic over several trips up and down the steps of our octagon bungalow. “Don’t be too long,” she reminded. I took this to mean we had errands to run, but I cannot remember exactly what, only that within the hour my Mother would hang up the phone and try to drag me out of the sunshine and into the frontseat.

I started with the packet of fruit snacks and finished with the juice box turned warm. I felt remotely annoyed with the heat, but knowing the inside of the house would offer little relief I grabbed a walkie-talkie and a stick and marched up and down the gangway. The strange etymology of this word, meaning the narrow alley between two houses, would not strike me as strange until I moved to the suburbs (1).

During my stick march, I looked down and saw a fat earthworm running its head along the pavement cracks, instinctually trying to reenter the cool habitat beneath the heated world of humans. Kneeling close to the specimen, I compared its skin to my own finger. A pinkish textured worm with a system of lines specific to the individual thing. In kindergarten we held up our hands to our neighbor’s and saw God made us all special and different. I mimicked the motion of the worm against the sun filtering between the houses but my bones broke the wiggle pattern of movement. It occurred to me that God was capable of mistakes, even cutting corners, and it was entirely possible God slipped worms over our bones to make fingers. That would explain why I was almost, but not quite able to do the worm with my own hand. But did God make mistakes? I had so many questions for my first grade teacher, but it being summer and not knowing yet who she may be (she because men didn’t teach at the Catholic elementary school level) I had to save these questions for later. Worried I might forget, I ran inside to grab my notebook and crayons. First, I would draw the worm, then I would write the question as a caption below. I drew a large ship, and Noah in robes at the front calling a set of earthworms forward with his own worm fingers. Unable to write the sentence, I just wrote “werm” and decided this drawing would serve as a reminder to ask the question.

Each time the earthworm would get close to reentering the grass, I would pick it up and return it to the middle of the sidewalk, like training a puppy. The combination of heat and oil from my fingers caused the worm to lose moisture and random bits of gravel and dirt collected in the prints of skin. Worried the bits might tear its delicate outsides, I filled a toy from the sandbox with water and poured it onto the worm’s dried body. It swam in the gutter of the sidewalk.

What I knew about worms then, is what I know about worms now and although I have never bothered to confirm this knowledge, everyone knows that cutting a worm in half would not kill it, but create two worms. If I had two worms, they could make baby worms (2).

At once, I decided I wanted two worms and that I would give one to my brother when he got home. God should ask all humans to find a worm, cut it in half and create two worms. Children make creation of all worms possible I decided. Without children worms stay in one piece and cannot continue on. I lifted the worm close to my face and considered where to make the incision. Exactly in half seemed fair, even though that would delegate the fatty band, what looked anatomically important, to the upper half, leaving the lower half skinny and without. I wondered if the worm’s movements were always in conflict, the upper half headed in the soil, with the lower half headed for the sky, and that this was how the worm ended up in the middle of the pavement in the first place. My stick would create a new peace. I lifted it above my head pausing above the worm’s body on second thought to re-grip for accuracy, lowered the tip a few millimeters away from the point of incision, and struck hard. This move easily severed the worm in two. I was surprised to see it bleed red, something that seemed so human. Perfectly okay for dogs or even elephants but not worms. Blood filled the cracks in its skin like my own knuckle filler with blood after a papercut a few days earlier.

The worm’s upper half wiggled on, though partially tethered by skin to the cement where I had acted. The bottom half laid motionless. This was the first indication I screwed up. I wiped the sweat out from behind my knees and found a leaf to entice the second half back to life. With no progress, I picked up the stick and stabbed for the second time into the bottom half of the worm. A gooey white pus stuck to the tip of the stick I held up to the sun. A sudden madness came over me and below I saw the third upper half still moving, alive with a little dried blood caked on its wound like the cuts my brother got in the corner of his mouth. What I thought to be its head, poked upward like a puppet controlled by the paralyzed half of its body pinned to the cement. With this I stabbed again. I drove the stick directly into its fatty band whose pus ran yellow like baby chicks out of the pouch, not white. That was where the worm babies lived. I rubbed its guts into the sidewalk and kicked the rest of the worm bits into the grass where it had been inching its way all along. I would not give my brother a worm when he got home. I thought of a story my Dad told us frequently before bed. The one where he and a group of his friends were aiming rocks at a baby bunny. None of the boys were a good enough shot, but eventually my Dad’s rock hit the bunny in the head and it died right there. He told me he felt terrible but all his friends congratulated him on killing the baby bunny. He told me to be kind to animals. I threw the stick in my neighbor’s yard and ran inside.

My mother was still on the phone. The cord wrapped around her fingers, tapping the table where she was scribbling faces. I snuck past her into my bedroom. “Did you clean up everything outside?”
“Yes!” I shouted as I shoved everything under my bed. I bet my Mom never killed a thing in her life. She wouldn’t understand why I did it. I took out the worm drawing and crumpled it up. Why couldn’t I be eight? Then I could go to confession and God would forgive me. I took my cross off its nail on the wall and slid it in my drawer. I knew there must be millions of worms and one death would not matter, and I even probably ran over some on accident when riding my bike or just walking without looking down but I knew this was different. I remembered Moses and the Ten Commandments. Had I killed? I got out my children’s Bible and tried to find a picture of what hell looked like when my Mom burst into the room. “What are you doing reading that?” I slammed it shut and followed her out to the van where I sat in silence.

By dinner, I had almost forgotten about the worm until my Mom put a plate of spaghetti in front of me. “Do you want me to cut it up for you?”
“No!” I was quick to say and went for the garlic bread.

I cannot remember exactly how I forgave myself for what I had done, but I do remember having a section in my nightly prayers dedicated to the all the happy worms in the world. A few years later, I caught some of the neighborhood boys frying a worm with a magnifying glass and I begged them to stop until I cried. “Boys will do that,” my babysitter told me, but I knew it had nothing to do with being boys. Either they would figure it out, or they wouldn’t.

(1). As it happens, the word gangway comes from the Old English gangwe (C1000) and predates the word gangster to mean a gang of criminals (1896). This fact surprised me since as child I assumed the gangway was the preferred passage for criminals who intended to rob us. When my bike was stolen I was sure it was because the gangway allowed the burglars access to an infrastructure beyond the uses of citizens who meant well.

(2). I would not learn that worms were capable of reproducing solo until I turned eight.

2009-03-30T10:04:00.001-06:00

let the faucet drip
let the faucet drip

2009-03-29T12:34:00.001-06:00

Note: ITS recommends that passwords contain characters from three of the four categories: upper case letters, lower case letters, digits (0-9), and other "special" characters (such as !, $, and ?).

little walt whitman

2009-03-23T21:26:00.001-06:00

loved to have his picture taken outside Jersey.
he felt no truer sense of potpourri with the
back & forth motion of sunshine & his
mother’s wind chimes blowing in the porch.
when she slipped on the green dress walt
ran at the zipper. could he keep her safe from
alone? in a sunny room with an open fire
he felt tame wondering about origins &
what the birds see.

2009-03-16T22:46:00.001-06:00

the corn took photographs we drove
my little desire flowers on your head
a sculpture park in skokie we looked
good told you some poems fill the
drawer just for you not like gifts
like pinky swears birthday candles
fountain coins counting past the
cemetery piñatas white summer
berries tan around your ankles we
stuck our hands out the frontseat
you were twentytwentyonetwentytwo
with me

2009-03-05T17:16:00.001-06:00

most poems are really just
two lines

AWP

2009-03-02T20:38:00.003-06:00

The couple distracted everyone at the reading
The constant he’s so she’s so

        He the cinnabon
        She the fruit cup

On the outside
the serious ears of poesy

        He the translation
   She the mother tongue

whose heads metric bobbed
& gave righteous sighs
to say the poetry was great!
Chicago! is great!

On the inside bobbed
logistically to the couples’ bed

        He the gourd
        She the kumquat

envious to how this husband
sees this wife in the way
only a husband can see
a wife’s quotidian
with no bra folding the laundry
on the computer, reading
so there is no God
but for this man

        He the sunken anvil
        She the water chestnut

so all that me or any other
could only utter: I thought
the two of them did a great job
up there on stage together

GAY ANIMALS SHAPES POEM

2009-02-17T00:16:00.001-06:00

I write about a bird and it’s a gay bird.
-Brian Teare

Hey check out that gay bird over there that’s a really gay bird Look at its gay feathers on its gay gay breast I’d like to see that gay bird naked with its gay naked beak Hey check out that gay dog licking with its gay tongue I want to touch it. Hey check out that gay tiger writing with its gay tiger paw that’s one gay paw look at its gay fag paw Hey look at that gay elephant over there with its gay gay hooves wow that’s one gay elephant I’d like to squeeze that gay elephant’s gay into a double gay Wow check out that gay hippo that’s one homo of a hippo I want to ride it into the sunshine with a megaphone Hey check out that gay Camel it’s so butch I want to take it to a field and throw softballs back and forth that Camel’s so g-a-y you ever see a camel so gay and the cacti and the Saudis and the prickly pears and the sand plateaus have a desertload of gay camel humps I want to take it out back and shave that gay camel bald Hey check out that gay jungle its gotten really gay lately I want to squeeze my gay ass all over that gay jungle’s gay and make a really really gay gay gay gay gay gay zoo!

2009-02-06T20:08:00.001-06:00

2009-02-06T11:11:00.000-06:00

toast the ocean margarine spirits
   adorable waves & your curfew
   sneezing adopt me
   pardon age lips on your neck
   after school

2009-02-03T13:17:00.003-06:00

people are taking the world

& selling it back to me

at usurious rates

stop it

2009-02-02T19:28:00.001-06:00

Marge Jackson

did things for causes
like running
& spilled coffee all over
her pants
but could make various couscous
& had complicated rules about coasters
she waited for everything
for someone to plow the cul-de-sac or
get divorced
is that a crack in my ceiling?
so her mouth seemed huger
when she stomped out flies
she must have murdered hundreds
or thousands
& told her husband if he was going to do that
do that in the bathroom
with a huge sigh
snooped through her son’s drawer
& didn’t tell his father
any more than he needed to know
is that a smudge on my wall?
& right back to work
took pride in her city
but
all this noise
complicated this vision
of greener greener
greener grass

2009-02-01T21:38:00.013-06:00

Be sure

before you

forget.

-aram saroyan

Along my daily route, I’ve been walking more, sat an untouched bucket of orange chicken beneath the blue wall Louisiana sky. Sitting as if some chef delighted in placing the prized dish on top the grass in hopes students would subconsciously store and recall this visual information when stumbling home after a long night of conversations around a kitchen table. In that moment when a girl carries her unbuckled heels and drags her blistered feet, and the boy confronts a wall for a piss around midnight, each will remember this subconscious craving the chef delightfully placed inside their heads Monday morning, and settle what misunderstandings the night invited over a steaming bucket of orange chicken without recognizing the root of their desires. Sales increasing 20 percent.

Or at what point does the tired couple leave the Chinese restaurant and discard the bucket of untouched orange chicken in the grass? Perhaps because they intended to have a nighttime picnic but fell asleep, and when the dawn started in the chicken went cold, so an experiment began to discover which morning creature liked orange chicken best? When actually, most animals have strong instinctive memory, familiar with the dish’s origins in the Hunan Province animals can easily distinguish between imitation and authentic orange chicken. And although species variations exist, surely some transcontinental talk occurred between China’s small monkey squirrel and the Western gray squirrel, informing them of threats such as MSG, upset stomachs and massive quantities of sugar cultivated by cheap franchises so no small woodland creature nor us will ever taste the real thing.

What’s more, this could easily be the work of extra terrestrials experimenting with new force field technologies on indispensible humans. Any attempt to juggle the moist nuggets would result in an electric shock so intense it would momentarily stop a beating heart and erase the subject’s memory of the previous twenty seconds. The chance side effect being the odor of orange chicken would induce vomiting hiccups for the remainder of the perpetrator's existence.

Any and all cases except that of temper or dislike, because nobody angrily places a bucket of orange chicken in the grass and calmly walks off without kicking its contents.

The speculations continued with the second morning of bewitched chicken, followed by the third and fourth day, it then being Thursday. The bucket remained upright and untouched. No human nor creature thought to interrupt such divine puzzling circumstances. Certainly not me, as the chicken since Monday had served as a source of daily motivation, anticipating the days old bucket caught in the winter southern sun as if just glazed and garnished with orange peel. Though itching to spread word of its existence it remained a secret, not selfishly but certain that like UFO sightings and Jesus faces in the pavement no one would believe my story. Except maybe you.

Except that sometimes in the morning I forget to think of you. I’m all the way to the toilet, the fridge, my bagel in the toaster and a glass of milk before I realize something’s missing. The day breaks and the moon and sun act on everything; a tide of cars washes up on the drive and I’ve gotten dressed without much thought until I land on your still sleeping face (as I’m up a little earlier than you now) where I left you on the snowy steps outside Chicago and think two people cannot live under such purposeful distance. So days go by without really talking.

And if I called you later maybe you wouldn’t want to hear about chicken at all. So I spent days finessing the narrative like a doughball gathering mass under a chef’s orders from Monday to Thursday, anticipating your voice when I’m finally home and shoeless with the day in my chest, and you might want to listen to my small stories and I’ll hear yours if you’re nice. And you’re always nice. Except I never called, and the story went bad and someone or something finally came and took that chicken bucket away and when you asked me days later “What’s new?” all I said was some rotten story about how I accidentally ordered two copies of the same book and my neighbors got their roof fixed. So I’m telling you maybe we don’t need help from professionals or published works or time to flirt away, or all the technologies invented to hold people together, but small stories about chicken buckets and morning walks and the time the wind bumped your hat off your beautiful tiny neck as a joke, as wind jokes go.

My Non-Fiction Self-Portrait

2009-01-30T13:06:00.002-06:00

To be really good at anything I had to be a boy. To stand for good in this world I had to wear galoshes and catch bluegills on the shore of the feeder creek. Back when we were working class, my mother had a big nose, and my father was the age I am now, we would load our Ford Minivan and escape to the Northwest corner of the Illinois countryside where I ran around like Huckleberry Finn, carved stick weapons, lit things on fire, and trespassed building sites. Around the same time, I suspected I might really be a boy. With my fingers I’d press the skin around my bellybutton like doctors massage sick throats, looking for swollen parts that didn’t belong but I couldn’t be sure of anything.

I stopped believing in God when my Grandma chased the Mexican lawn service men we gave her for Christmas into the street shouting, “Cut your own country’s grass!” and my babysitter’s son entered the monastery so he could molest young boys and science could be anything we wanted it to be. I told my fourth grade teacher I dreamed of being the first female priest and she told me that was against God’s will, so I drew a space helmet over my cassock because my parents almost named me after Christa McAuliffe, who went down with the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger, but instead named me Melissa after the Allman Brother’s song.

I told my Grandma I denounced my Catholicism and she called me a lesbian even though I didn’t know what the word meant. She asked why couldn’t I be like my other cousins? who gave their boyfriends blowjobs in their attic bedroom and asked me which New Kids On the Block member I would give a handjob. I didn’t know how to respond because it all sounded like a lot of work.

A girl from down the street named Wendy started to babysit me so my parents could have a life again. She gave me all her old Barbie dolls because she had a boyfriend to buy her jewelry. I had a “No Dolls Rule” all my relatives obeyed, but free discarded Barbies were okay to have. So I took off all their clothes, shaved their heads and introduced them to G.I Joe because he was a real man. Then I put all my brother’s green army men in the microwave and brewed concoctions from kitchen ingredients that he would have to swallow as punishment for being younger than me. One time I liquefied pizza and milk and he threw up pizza and milk.

After watching too many scary movies, I stopped showering for fear the Candyman would hook me through the medicine cabinet and remove my larynx. My parents embarrassed me. They confiscated my Dr. Dre. I obsessed about running away from home, showering in McDonald’s bathroom and receiving a self-education from the public library. In the winter of 2000 I got my period in Jewel Osco and stopped believing I was a boy so I had to start dating them. My first real boyfriend was obsessive compulsive and disinfected his Nintendo 64 controllers after we played. We both idolized Eminem because we were white and misunderstood by other white people. Around fourteen, I calmed down, started high school in the suburbs and only thought about normal stuff. I hung out with assholes. In the hallway I dropped things and felt embarrassed. This grew boring. I discovered alcohol and things were fun again. I wanted to drink like Hemingway, go on safaris and drive across the country like Kerouac, but my teacher told me, “Try and see more than just the tip of the iceberg” so I rode into the sunset to figure out what he meant.

***********

So the ending is a little problematic. We're working on it.

A Bachelor's Misfortune

2009-01-26T21:32:00.000-06:00

I.

In 1902
America first smelled gasoline.
With our shapes doing damage to the west
dressed like plants in autumn, we
walked the red rock Hoover made Arches Park
where later Ridley Scott pushed two ‘66 Thunderbirds from the top.
Two because the first one fell wrong.
You are a rare bird. Anne / Anne your name a list of things.
I fell for you broke & sad.

II.

I am the man who shipped nine thousand oranges to people in the suburbs of Denver Chicago & Los Angeles who hate me.
Parents can regret children.
I am grotesque & unusable.
I slip into beautiful moments.

III.

No one was buying.
You wanted to open a school.
We pulled sandwiches under the balance of rocks,
taught you to drive my Duesy & flung cigarettes at the desert.
Was it Anne?
Who never did her evening dishes? When she died
they put makeup on her face she never wore. She said no blue.
She hated blue. She made me hate blue. She said it made her vomit.
She bleached my blue underwear brown. She bleached my brown underwear pink.
She bleached everything.

IV.

The only woman I know calls Mexico on my landline.
Her husband instructs children on a Vihuela painted rose.
I pay her a thousand a week for my care. She tells her husband
she gets four hundred. I have no idea
what she does with the other six,
Let every light on. I’m going somewhere very dark.
I sleep lit up like a jeweler. Never in my bed.
I don’t want to miss death.

2009-01-25T23:44:00.001-06:00

some poets have long thoughts
& beautiful faces
I’m still writing the dirt song
for you

2009-01-24T12:22:00.002-06:00

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

Picture of a 22 Year Old Youth in the Waiting Room

2009-01-19T13:47:00.001-06:00

Saturday is tear down Christmas
& Sue’s party in the afternoon
upholstery, a sneeze, healthy plants
nothing beautiful in the waiting room
the blonde woman, uglier & parenting
a small row of buttons
some art on the wall
wash away
the patients’ complaints
Part pagan, part Christian
in our lore
the Glory of the Byzantines
when fountains go all year
only the favored side of our faces showing
in my thoughts I dreamt of
baths on the weekend
& hoped you were a boy
& hoped I was a boy
cause what if you had someone
& you loved someone
& someone died forever?
at a young time when we did not touch happy because
it’s so nice to be back
in pleasant weather
wearing safety yellow

2009-01-19T11:40:00.001-06:00

Little girl & the bird
Hello, Hello fat bird
c'mere fat bird
every other weekend
with her father

Google Trends

2009-01-16T12:26:00.001-06:00

andrew wyeth
christina s world
circuit city liquidation
andrew wyeth christina s world
helga testorf
miracle on the hudson
c.b. sully sullenberger
video of flight 1549
jamie wyeth
who wrote the wizard of oz

2009-01-10T18:18:00.001-06:00

I'm off'n wild wimmen
An Cognac
An Sinnin'
For I'm in loOOOOOOOve.

-Ernest Heminway
Paris 1922

Marge Jackson

2008-12-08T15:25:00.000-06:00

did things for causes
like running
& spilled coffee all over
her pants
but could make various couscous
& had complicated rules about coasters
for some reason
she waited for everything
for someone to plow the cul-de-sac or
is that a fucking crack in the ceiling?
so her mouth seemed huger
when she stomped out flies
she must have murdered hundreds
or millions
& told her husband if he was going to do that
do that in the bathroom
with a huge sigh

2008-12-06T16:36:00.001-06:00

you looked
most beautiful
I’d seen
& washed my hands
in your sink blue eyes

Penance

2008-11-30T22:41:00.002-06:00

in her bag
down the bungalow
she took the fog
slip
& canoe
cross-legged?
on a comfortable bank
without knees she is water
lattice & bones
an argument for night
landscapes-i swear if she-
but she does, move the cattails
remove a sandal
out my quiet child sheets
the country smells funk & stew
down her silhouette
does remove a sandal
shadow puppet, shots of toes
across the blouse & then oh,
she barely goes but I catch
the casted minnow, one eye
open to her silver, the other off
into my pillow whispering
Hail Mary, full of grace
Hail Mary, full of grace

2008-11-28T15:30:00.001-06:00

in her bag
up the bungalow walk
she took the fog
scarf
& canoe

Phone Actress

2008-11-25T09:59:00.002-06:00

I worked in insurance making shit. This is a multi-billion dollar industry. Who’s really polluting society? I always tell the same story.

One night this guy rings & wants a mannequin so he brings me to Sears and puts me in a petticoat. I’m like, “what’s a petticoat?” but I don’t ask. He wants to know what kind of powder I got. So I say, “like foundation?"

“Rub that on your human shine. Stand next to this mannequin. Pose,” real creepy like, doesn’t even want to know my panties. My skin looks dull.

He’s got this whole thing.
The first shopper who identifies the real mannequin gets 50% off all Sears merchandise, which includes some home appliances & lawn & garden. Suddenly, “You can’t move your elbow. Try,” he says. I can’t move my elbow. But it’s not total bondage or anything.

No one wins that TV fridge or leaf blower. I’m so good at posing.
He says, “You’re becoming my mannequin; the powder is working. I’m the boss he reveals & I hadn’t known because of his disguise.

We end up in his Taurus.
“Sorry about the shit in the back,” he says.
“That’s okay you should see my car,” I laugh.

Only my lips remain warm, fleshy & movable.
Then silence on the other line so I’m like, “Hey man, Hello? what next?"

“The second I touch your pussy
you turn into a mannequin.”

2008-11-24T17:24:00.000-06:00

Kathy Acker: I don't think anyone knows what they are talking about when they talk about pornography. I don't think women who look anorexic in Vogue are any less pornographic than, say, women who are dominatrices in some porn novel. I mean, I'm more oppressed by anorexic women who walk around with no arms. I get to America, I turn on the hotel TV around noon, and the first thing I hear is, "Is there life after thirty? Can a woman find a husband?" Isn't that pornographic? I'd censor that before I would censor 42nd Street. I'd rather see Russ Meyer, that filmmaker who has all the women with big tits, than be told that I have no life because I'm over thirty.

Milly & Marshall

2008-11-21T21:51:00.004-06:00

A piece of flash fiction I thought about after looking at things in my apartment.

“Have you read Don Quixote?”
“Why’d I have to read that?”
“Not the real one, the Kathy Acker one.”
“Oh. No.”
“Do you ever think about my pussy Marshall?”
“Don’t call it that.”
“Do you?”
“Probably.”
“It’s the most natural thing in the world you know. To think about one.”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t see what’s so special about Bob Dylan.”
Milly stood up from her trundle bed and hit stop on the player.
“I guess it’s just that it’s revolutionary. And maybe you had to be there for it to be special.”
Milly didn’t want to be sentimental. “Do you think my Mom lets us hang out up here because she wants us to have sex?”
“What? No, why would she want you to do that?”
“So she’d know I’m normal. You know.”
“No. I don’t think parents ever want their children to have sex. I bet your grandparents still don’t think your parents have done it with you and your sister born. It’s not like you go to bed early just so your parents can do it.”
“I’ve thought about that before. I think it’d be good for them.”
“Well how would your Mom know we’d done it anyway?”
“She’d look for an old condom I guess.”
“What if we never used one?”
“She’d look for my old hymen! I don’t know. That’s a stupid question she would just know.”
“I guess I don’t see how’d she know.”
“Probably cause you’d have a dumb look on your face walking out of here that’s how.”

Love This Woman

2008-11-19T12:05:00.003-06:00

“Once more we need to see what writing is. We need to step away from all the business. We need to step to the personal. This is what I mean by flight. Business has become too heavy, too dominant. We need to remember friends, that we write deeply out of friendship, that we write to friends. We need to regain some of the energy, as writers and as readers, that people have on the internet when for the first time they e-mail, when they discover that they can write anything, even to a stranger, even the most personal of matters. When they discover that strangers can communicate with each other.

The bestowing of meaning and, thus, the making of the world, the word as world: this is what writing is about.”

-Kathy Acker

2008-11-10T14:30:00.002-06:00

> > > > > > > > > > > > I dunno. I'm just > > freaked out >
> > you'll > > > > change your life for me and >
> > then I'll > > fail > > you.
> > > > > > > or you'll come> > > > > > > > > >

> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > here and > > > > > > > you'll>> hate
> > > it > > and > > it'll be all my fault and >
> > you'll > > blame me for > > the rest of your
> > > life...
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > but also check this out

Ode for Walking / Talking

2008-11-10T13:36:00.014-06:00

Rolling my giant brain in a wheelbarrow
to the university- one arm akimbo
stopping with my brain for a whole ten minutes
      i must be rafted
on a chocolate seachip, oaring
   rolling along giant brains along
thankful for this longer footed transit
from point A to B, having the toilet or driving
time / space / whatever, can’t be heard
   do we get enough small sweats?
women pivot on their vulvas
men too
reflexively, maybe cognitively, turning in a warm sun helmet
   so silly : talk to me
sound like Illinois, i could walk - maybe
rewind all these peoples - back into their mother’s kangaroo
basically everybody is an artist at that place
but i’m just reading, to people half-thinking about
going down on each other, i got my story here:
from the first you fall in love with her hands
“I” i mean realistically “you”
   don’t have to listen

2008-11-09T20:32:00.001-06:00

you laugh, you say, you have
gay teeth

2008-11-03T21:27:00.002-06:00

For a poet, I have a very low I.Q
like I couldn’t remember any of those fucking GRE words
Like pulchritudinous
It just means pretty for Christ’s sake
How is it that 98 percent
can multiply a binomial times a binomial better than me?
I never notice when the cashier gives me wrong change
& every year is the year
of the Rubix cube
I couldn’t get into Harvard or anything
My parents wanted me to be happy, or at least
write fiction. Like the Great Nicholas Sparks who probably got
at least 700 on the verbal
My kids won’t know I am afraid
why the sky is blue or how to do long division
It’s not so bad
I always remember to charge my cell
& get the toilet paper on sale

2008-11-02T19:02:00.000-06:00

For a poet, I have a very low I.Q.
I couldn’t remember any of those fucking GRE words.
Like pulchritudinous.
It just means pretty for Christ’s sake.
I fall in the 2 percentile of people who
98% can use the FOIL method to multiply a binomial times a binomial better than me.
I never notice when the cashier gives me the wrong change.
I couldn’t get into Harvard or anything.
My parents wanted me to be happy, or at least
write fiction. Like the great Nicholas Sparks who probably got
at least 700 on the verbal.
I am afraid when I get older my kids won’t know
why the sky is blue or how to do long division.
But I always remember to charge my cellphone
and get the toilet paper on sale.

Everything I Needed to Know Mom Taught Me

2008-10-29T22:51:00.002-06:00

The first time I understood life was inside Kohl’s dressing room. Someone had taken a shit on the floor. I was five and trying on pants. There was shit on the floor. It’s easy to get lost in Kohl’s. When I found Mom I showed her the shit.
“Mom” I said, “Can you do that here?”
“If you really have to go. Yes” she said.
…

2008-10-29T20:51:00.001-06:00

Who is
Suzette?
the woman
below death outside kind woods carrying blocks over leaf feet?
or the woman crazy off shipped billowing lips by the door?
Who is
Suzette?

2008-10-27T15:54:00.000-06:00

Mulvey's Gaze

2008-10-26T11:08:00.008-06:00

I am trying     to tell you about bottled water     not getting enough iron leaving the butter out     my big fumble     always one      58 degrees     or the other     here comes my rain     into the kitchen counter writing     does it succeed?     here comes my October Illinois     my small crappy toast     you can’t just     write about your girlfriend     sad to know     we have another sixty autumns or so     my silver/green/silver pinwheel     at least I’m trying     you lover of lilacs & bronze
there are poems that get you on the road     up through Sangamon     you want what you want always     over farmhouses and fields between us      when we couldn’t stop     sick with it     the last time we talked     we are not that couple     up Kankakee     we got everything     but touch     out looking for my breath     what strange habits   the economy fucked us/no     it’s choices     and     and     and     I chose
some days you won’t love me     one day I won’t leave     you won’t go back up those stairs     I won’t drive away     trying to tell you     at Baton Rouge     the magnolia     there are poems that get you in the plane     mostly I just miss you     grazing argyle     your thorax/hinge joints/carpals/fibula     other obscure parts      my slip of skirt     i do to you     what i do do to you     you know you     slip like a dream     someone has to look at you like that

Early Procedure

2008-10-26T11:00:00.004-06:00

No.
I won’t bucket my dung,
make a doody for you.
Dangle at the pot
while you address my stool with coo coos & wee wees.

I had perfectly hammocked dung. But you urged me elsewhere daily,
            on that occasion,
             my brow, lips, eyes, met my snout-
      that is to say, they collided in a constipated fit of effort
            of tectonic facial convergence
                 to create a new sea floor

and it hurt. So I swallowed the mole entirely & flushed the air.
   Mother knew better.
   At this point,

the mole was five, maybe six days old & bundled hard into cashews.
   You complained further to my buttocks
   coaxing it like an extra elbow, & I felt
   okay standing there knowing I had my mole,
   were not for the tubas.
   And I realized the poop had spoken;
   (muffled as it were in baritone yodels).

You heard it too.
I shot for any dust ruffle in defense of my anus.
This went on for some time in a fair chase, but your eyes hulked, increasingly,
   unsheathing the clyster from your apron.

   My sphincter clammed.
   As you lanced the syringe at my buttocks with all
   the speed of some enema casting wizard.

The betrayal was immediate.
Injecting my buttocks with tears,
   bargaining with my poop, but she had more
   than had it up to here! with my Crapola.
   (& her father was Italian so she spitted).

“You too mother?”
I wobbled, peering
   at my doody
   speach flush must have weighed
as much as a litter of small mice
possibly yams
or some bread loaf.

Feminization of Spectators

2008-10-17T21:09:00.007-05:00

     I am trying     to tell you about bottled water     not getting your iron     leaving the butter out     forgetting it     my big fumble     always one     58 degrees     or the other     here comes my rain     into your kitchen counter writing     here comes my October Illinois     my small crappy toast     sad to know     we have another sixty autumns or so     at least I’m trying
     there are poems that get you on the road     up through Sangamon     you want what you want always     over farmhouses and fields between us     up Kankakee     we got everything     but touch
     some days you won’t love me     one day I won’t leave     you won’t go back up those stairs     I won’t drive away     trying to tell you     there are poems that get you in the plane     mostly I just miss you     grazing     argyle sweaters     my slip of skirt     i do to you     what i do     do to you     you know you     slip like a dream     someone has to look at you like that

The Mississippi River

2008-10-14T09:44:00.001-05:00

Danielle's Poem

2008-10-08T09:37:00.004-05:00

hark!

the angles!

the triangles!

how soft!

Sports Teams & Imagined Communities

2008-09-23T16:26:00.007-05:00

Chicago currently has the privilege of both its major league baseball teams en route to the playoffs. Followers of sports teams may know the Cubs as the team that hasn’t won the World Series in over one hundred years and showcased Sammy Sosa’s losing homerun tournament with Mark McGwire, and the White Sox as that other team that sometimes win, and by some chance did in 2005.

The competing stadiums are situated barely ten miles apart, yet what outsiders may not know is that the fans of each team identify with very different regional identities (outliers permitting). Historically, fans rooting for the Cubs were from the Northside, the area reserved for the business people and artists while those cheering for the White Sox hail from the Southside, Chicago’s place for the stockyards and steel mills, or the working class people. Fans tend to pledge allegiance to their neighborhood team in which they grew up, but fans of the recent “Cub culture” would not have grown up in the area surrounding Wrigley field for a few reasons.

Recently, Cabrini Green, Chicago’s largest housing project on the near Northside, was demolished and in its place grew upscale housing for city commuters. The buildings in the area underwent major restoration, drawing Yuppies, as referred to by Charles Reagan Wilson, from the surrounding suburbs. This shift known as urban gentrification is classified by the movement of affluent individuals into a previously lower-class area, resulting in a huge shift in demographics. These young professionals with money to spend now need the neighborhood to provide them with bars to unwind after work, restaurants to schmooze clients and art galleries to boast high culture and diversity. In recent years, Wrigleyville, what the area surrounding the stadium came to be called, went from the low-income area where white people don’t go, to a hipster metropolis crawling with young professionals of mixed backgrounds. It is no surprise that a clash of these elements created a surge of diversity spawning art museums and drawing students from the nearby predominantly private universities. All of this shifting around gave birth to a new breed of Cubs fans, increasing the tension between the classes.

Children born and raised in the suburbs identify with the Cubs. Wrigleyville is the area their parents took them to eat Chicago-style hotdogs, catch a comedy show and shop for souvenirs. The Tribune, Chicago’s newspaper owns Wrigleyfield and has propagated the Cubs as the “lovable losers.” Tourists and business clients visit the historic Wrigley stadium with that old American baseball feel; the queer population, drawn by the area’s diversity, has resulted in LGBT themed games days. In fact, even during the Cubs’ worst seasons in history, they still consistently fill the Wrigley stadium with screaming onlookers.

Where does all this leave the Sox fans? They can be found on the Southside of Chicago, sitting on the porches with a battery-powered radio in hand, antennae to the sky listening the game. The Sox stadium, US Cellular, rarely sells out (unless it’s versus the Cubs) and is centered in one of Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods, but the fans can always be found on the crowded couches of their neighbors or in the bar down the street. The fans find their differences, and define the greatness of their team against the other, in an on-going battle that is fueled by more than just allegiance to the a team, but also its corresponding culture and region. Then there are those outliers, bound to discredit all our theories on regionalism. Have you guessed what team your queer classmate born and raised on the Southside, but who migrated to upper-middle class suburbia and became a poet cheers for? I’ll give you a hint: GO SOX!

2008-09-22T21:43:00.002-05:00

I did not know
these men on roads
beside moods of calm slop
rivers on the going there side
         separated by law
were in search

of a daughter
in a place of her sidewalks
with all her small points at things
                                 this is the road where
                                 these are my bears who
                                 look at our fridge!
with her own small voice
always happening into
asking why?
one person is always here
with the other there

these poets on their roads
built for daughters
beside moods of corn notes
         separated by law
rivers on the coming back side
sad at this too big place
that won’t hold

how along these men go along always
to people talking on different subjects
supposing lunches or walks
writing on all these words pointed away
having some life
                                 this is the desk where
                                 these are the students who
                                 look at his notebook!
I do know
of my teacher
in the mind of this poet
always the small daughter there

2008-09-17T15:16:00.002-05:00

how was your day?
asks the couple
how was your day?
the vegan hands me
a book of sad chickens
I give her peace
Louisiana cools off
in this September
& I don’t miss her
any less

2008-09-17T11:40:00.001-05:00

Everybody here
looks like somebody
there

Benjamin Franklin's Thirteen Names of Virtues

2008-09-17T00:25:00.003-05:00

1. Temperance

Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.

2. Silence

Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation

3. Order

Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time

4. Resolution

Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve

5. Frugality

Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing

6. Industry

Lose no time; be always employ'd in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions

7. Sincerity

Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly

8. Justice

Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty

9. Moderation

Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve

10. Cleanliness

Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation

11. Tranquility

Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable

12. Chastity

Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation

13. Humility

Imitate Jesus and Socrates

2008-09-14T20:12:00.008-05:00

Twentytwo years ago you were publishing poems in New York City
I wetted onto the Catholic scene, fresh for original sin
greeting your permed vulva, fruitpits
everything successful about the eighties
          large flogging underwear, I praised
your titled spine, sat up colicky & soiled
smelling your Gucci, digits whipping through a sandbox
only to hate my babe puppered skin
I flung my nappy, a gesture of love
          rang you for outdoor sushi but you had a book reading in Buffalo
          ate sugared cereal, prank called your Mother
          burglarized your man, picnicked in my cul-de-sac
still no new messages
hormonal, I wrote you alarmed
my seasoned breasts had stalked, you looked good
          organically meated & into yogurt
I blurbed your first novel positively
you chucked me out roaring
only I cleared your thin railed mouth into mine
that once, I felt on your veins
listened to your abdomen caffeinate
mustacheless, I brushed you
only to find you never married
kegeled & called your sister

2008-09-12T20:46:00.010-05:00

I did not know
these men on roads
beside rivers of moods and calm slop
alone, traveling with the air
           separated by law
were in search
of a daughter

in a place of her sidewalks
with all her small points at things
                              this is the street where
                              that is my friend who
                              look at our fridge!
with her own small voice
always happening into

these men on their roads
built for daughters
return, rivers on the coming back side
how along these men go along always
to people talking on different subjects
supposing lunches or walks
writing on all these words pointed away
having some life
I know
always the small daughter there
in the mind of this father

2008-09-12T14:27:00.001-05:00

I do not want to go to Tony Piazzo’s summer camp and be the only kid with clean socks. I hate stupid games. I hate stupid kids. I forget to wear shorts with pockets and have to carry my inhaler on the soccer field. The ice cream machine never works.

Mike Brien has a shaved head. I guessed he is cute that way. He uses crispwoodevergreen deodorant and I kissed him underwater during swim lessons with my eyes open when Miss Rebecca looked away. I imagine he has a penis somewhere. Other girls say, “Mike Brien is so cute,” and I give them my middle finger. We all have naked armpits and dry off. I tell Miss Rebecca if she shows me her boobs I won’t tell. Or just one and I won’t tell. This makes her real mad and I can’t go back to Tony Piazzo’s summer camp so Mike Brien dumped me for Natalie Harrison. I feel stupid I gave him a picture of me since he probably scribbled my face out.

2008-09-10T00:12:00.001-05:00

I know that
pimples
are God's pimples

2008-09-08T17:05:00.002-05:00

The first time
I saw a dead baby guniea pig
on the side of the road
I thought who?
lets their guniea pig
play in traffic?

First Workshop Poem

2008-09-08T17:03:00.003-05:00

she wears real breasts
the kind your mother wore
in her twenties, in that photo-
graph, holding the baby, next
to bridge rocks, show
ered, in what hair?
leaking mammalian

2008-09-08T00:56:00.003-05:00

I lie southern in
bed one light on
my girl lies north
in a pillow
calendars out
for review

Current Events

2008-09-07T12:35:00.002-05:00

Sarah Palin, Hurricanes
Hurricanes, Sarah Palin
Obama, Sarah Palin,
Hurricanes, McCain
Sarah Palin, Global Warming
Obama, Obama
Sarah Palin, Sarah Palin
Sarah, Palin

BR

2008-09-07T12:28:00.003-05:00

the fields, speaking numbers
against all lovers who try to
pin each walk between my coffee & your books
gone, my autumn in your pages
close to me now
at the risk of all words
risk this word
I feel serious
you move against the desk
this red, that blue, we are white
& small
how do I control you?
we can have babies
that look like us, remember?