Three mimipoems
SpelunkingI remember you
deep and vacuous
and claiming
there was simply more to explore
SupremacySo many people
walked with high heels
over the grate,
leaving wicks
of skin
and yards of nylon
MiscegenationFinding hundreds of
curly black ants shriveled
with their mouths
on their asses,
she dropped the sugar
deftly out back
Forgetting summer
The table stretched
indeterminable and pocked
over aspen chairs and my beaten tie
and unseen and redstriped tiles
I put my quaking thin
hand to my panicked pulse,
stopping the remembering and stopping the twitch
eyeing rough barred windows
The spring punched rampant and green
at my own enclosure, trailing the smells
of lemondrops and children in grass
and I thought, letting my blood stampede
I thought spotless arms and
and smooth chested boys
heaving between my arms
I thought towheads
and amber cheeks
and delighted eyebrows
I thought small hands
and listless summer
and bedrooms thick with sweat
The spring thin and white
over the endless table
and my endless arms,
holding my drooping face in
The uncontained cigarettes dripped
like crumbling amber
slipping between my fingers
and I coughed like a hollow photograph.
Letter from Tucson
It’s been rough, you see,
here beneath the roof,
the cracks overhead thin and menacing
like so many secretarial smiles,
and my refrigerator sagging
from fullness or wet.
It’s rough, because honestly,
who knows.
who knows here when the ceiling
or even the walls will fall
spinning away and leaving,
what?
me? Leaving me and the
thousands of empty cups,
the single chair at the stretching oak table?
Shake my head, with no one to see it.
It’s been rough here,
feeling the air so large
in such a small place
feeling the thud of my clothes.
The tv player reinvents celebrities
from stock
and who knows, who knows
where I’ve placed the remote?
I remember, well, what is there to remember.
everyone remembers, I’m telling the dry sink
and the bookshelves full of yellow,
but they’re not listening.
And what should I do?
what should I do if you come along in furs?
what should I do if he
oh you say ours comes along in black or pink?
should I say have an apple or some milk?
I should, I should.
The ceiling is thinner,
I thought to tell the manager’s mailbox,
the cracks are pulling apart the walls like vines,
the rough walls, and my so many cupboards,
I have so many cupboards.
Should I speak spanish to him?
You never spoke spanish to me.
These days I can see the sun
through dusty windows, smeared by summer,
I can see the sun turn the yellowing bookcases pink
and the table and the chair vague with motes
and turn the cracks into vines
coax them into ranges and valleys
sending their shadows like troops across the ceiling,
sending everything marching
if only towards twilight.
Even here, the air is flat
and nothing moves except the tv player
and the sun and my withered legs to the pine chair
like a throne
at the elongated heavy table
that always went so well together,
even cracked and spilling dust
like all comfortable things do.
Two story (I don't like the ending/repetition)
The neighbors, one new to this place,
murmur low, uncertain and
desperate to keep their inexorable
moans behind engorged tongues.
They placed their tentative
and coral pink hands like
blushing porcelain on the door,
smiling at the floor under my hornbill glasses.
Discretely, between the floorboards
the dust settled like men in chairs.
I waved them past, fumbling at my rims
as though the door could shut as it should.
Still, I said at the once white threshold,
Still, I said to the door, encasing hesitant and eager
and limped away, past still-lifes and younger portraits.
Still, I told them, forgetting the reach of my newfound daughter,
and shuffled downstairs.
Confidence
Despite all my waving dismissals
and deep gutted guffaws
I quaked when you
actually brought in
your doberman.
