My ode
These semen stained fingers
stroked your face
acrrylic tipped and she
whsipered and held
her breath and you
whispered in the sudden silence
bereft of moaning I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so sorry
she held your lips in
those sodden nails
and whispered how much she loved you
and how much it was okay
even when the shower didn't
whipe the white away.
Untitled (I thought about titling this piece in quotes, but I'd rather not. I also thought about ending the poem with "the coffee brewed." Thoughts?
in the french press,
after the first pour,
mystically floating,
above the mesh,
after you've roused,
between glass,
before the neighbor knocked,
swirling irritably,
while tasting the first cup,
after your boyfriend’s skin is washed from your nails,
before the second pour,
while you're still naked,
anticipating lips,
after your neighbors called me your boyfriend,
an inch above,
after your hysterics,
because hydraulics,
reflecting my belly hair,
floating on wire,
before you had nothing to call me,
after you punched your car with nails,
rumbling black,
after you stripped,
waiting for lips,
before you sifted me,
without grounds,
reflecting my brazen belly,
before my bedroom nailed back burned,
trapped in the decanter,
before you stripped my title,
dissolving the glass,
after you flayed your boyfriend’s back with bedroom nails,
after my rumpled clothes sank and I rose,
waiting and waiting for lips,
before your neighbors asked why I hit them,
swirling and strained,
after you called me your boyfriend,
anxiously expecting lips,
before you've dressed,
after you called me your boyfriend,
suspended by air,
after you’ve pulled your skin soaked nails from bed,
ruthlessly black,
before your neighbors ask me why I hit them for calling me your boyfriend,
reflecting my swirling belly hairs,
before I threw the cup,
while you washed my taste out,
before I poured the second cup,
before I kicked myself out,
floating an inch above wired sieve,
before you watched the still shuddering door,
while waking up,
mystically in air,
floating in suspense,
What we missed wednesday
Holding you after
months in Alaska
had given your hands horns
and your hips grown monstrous
like starving oxen
and your waist scattered beneath
my arm like powder
and your ravaged breasts
hung across your chest
when you laid down on your side
After the abortion, waiting on PS
the snow is wanton
sticking and cloy
like heavy paint
and so viscous
even the rails run dry
so the day crept up men’s legs and
through the heavy pleats
turning black to black and grey to grey
and everywhere plaster stuck from the sky
and everywhere like chipped and bloodless flesh
it pushed itself into dunes like shredded paper made from tungsten
flakes of glass and steel in bleach
the snow snowing and coating women’s reds and woman’s blues
with Wisconsin frozen and New York lost
so that the roads weren’t seen from the fields
reflecting brown into itself and yellow into itself
and the horses cut themselves on ice
and couldn’t bleed through the mountains of rolling snow like molten quartz
and the flowers found themselves invisible
The heavy paper so covered couldn’t find any black
and dropped like rain to sea
somewhere between Paul and their could-have-been
the not new geese flew razor-bent
into the snow pitched ground
Are you for 86?
Now, plus two or plus three
he goads himself over you
and over the missing two in raised and now
stuffed trousers
and you wait with rubberstrips to
push out something like a parasite
now, coalesced.
and, like wax, grown immense
and slated like cancer in gowns
it picks it’s geletationous hand
that looks translucent against your
breast so empty and cavernous
that your tit pulls its gums and sweaty lips
until it bawls blood.
so two years plus three before
you look for divinity in triplicate
or at least duplication from the three before
or the three that wetly made them
and find a quadruplet
missing bones with too many cells
and chromosomes marked in redundancy.
it squalls out for fathers with red chins
and red arms made from rubber and pressed
to your shape, one child made from four,
made by three.
October 17th, 2005
the rain taps on golden leaves where
dissatisfied, they hurtle further down
for 8 years in a standstill
and kettles and teapots
chortle sinister
and the red sycamore so silent outside
and the sun pale and gray
shines tentative
making brown amber
the label peels
table stretching from fingertips and lips
and a lamp slender and black
wells up bubbling light like a spring
far in the dark and behind corners
and one empty cup shows its clay breasts
a pen or two what could be three
it’s so hard to tell it’s murky
while doing
and the teapots at least 80 of them
all of them strangely named and cackling
Chrysanthemum Kale and Pansy
all growing crisp and vibrant with
the reds and yellows
and at least 22 kettles
sometimes they say more
named simply and starkly
with numbers like
6 and 13 and 18
and called just the same
boundless as they are
certainly it could be said
certainly there are stains and coffees
there are ashes and hundreds of inches of wood
the bark sliding down
and the portrait of ’97 cast in a pool of aspen
and oak and cottonwood
where she watched
and didn’t let them drift from the hurtling
fall to the chortling water feet away for 8 years
which condensed, like flowers,
spell portrait and desk
and everything not on it
After the abortion, waiting on PS
the snow is wanton
sticking and cloy
like heavy paint
and so viscous
even the rails run dry
so the day crept up men’s legs and
through the heavy pleats
turning black to black and grey to grey
and everywhere plaster stuck from the sky
and everywhere like chipped and bloodless flesh
it pushed itself into dunes like shredded paper made from tungsten
flakes of glass and steel in bleach
the snow snowing and coating women’s reds and woman’s blues
with Wisconsin frozen and New York lost
so that the roads weren’t seen from the fields
reflecting brown into itself and yellow into itself
and the horses cut themselves on ice
and couldn’t bleed through the mountains of rolling snow like molten quartz
and the flowers found themselves invisible
The heavy paper so covered couldn’t find any black
and dropped like rain to sea
somewhere between Paul and their could-have-been
the not new geese flew razor-bent
into the snow pitched ground
