voirdire

"See, some Women Really are Shaped like Guitars"

2012-02-04T17:36:00.000-08:00

I watch him like you'd watch a cat,
averting my eyes so he'll keep playing.

his fingers move fastest when no one is watching.
he sighs when his fingers get lost and the tune crunches up or down,
and when he gets down hunched over the piece of wood,
his toes curling and his head tilted,
I ache to be that string.

how many women have ached "play me, play me?"

but see, sometimes I think that's
all he's ever really trying to do.

maybe that's all men do when they play guitar,
try to play their women.
and the famous ones, I guess

it's because
they played their women right.

Dark Water

2012-01-23T09:42:00.000-08:00

so I said I was in love and I was lying.
but you bought it, right?
yes, and, you know, the cow, the coop.

we all did.
shoving our hands up skirts casually,
bar stools good as anywhere.

a little whiskey is a lot like fluttering,
but who was sober enough
to notice?

here, no one practices breathing,
and confined to small spaces and dark water
we turn our carnal heads

any which way a woman moves.

Fear Mongering

2011-12-16T19:51:00.000-08:00

she asked me "what do we do now?"

I told her, "we are going to never have children, and hope we die before they arrest us."

and the fear flooded through me to her and back. we shook on opposite ends of phone lines
and cringed because now we're on the watch list. or, rather, we have been.
since 14. since we made ourselves up and posed for star photos only other scrawny white girls from southern suburbs would see.
and who would know?
numbed.
we sat in catacombs and ached to braid each others hair and paint on bons bons like when we didn't realize
what was wrong with getting up to pledge.
of course.

I asked her why we're still here.
why we're not holding guns above our heads, shouting to hell with your prisons.

we are not too small, too poor, too stupid, too worked, too tired.
it cant be; but I'm starting to wonder if the Sahara is real.
Do our white Gods just tell us so on cable TV shows where our rich white cousins
ride down hippopotami with glaring lenses and an ability to unsee fault?

I take it back: I'd chance prison rather than wait to crawl into a grave no one
I know can pay for.
they're going to take away my right to eat the squash my father grew and cooked for me in 7 months. watch.
because I spat on a recruiting poster.
I hoisted up my skirt and told America to respect it;
instead they all cried slut! pointing fingers, damning everything, drinking their taxes.
at this point, who has the patience to look up "Marshal Law" anyway?

"Clean as a Cat"

2011-10-29T12:17:00.000-07:00

I came home shoving through the lock, and cried to the record player I'm not ready to go down!
not with them, who,
too young for sinking, submerge into the murk this city tastes in their nightly sulpher water,
one hand on the bar, other hand snatching out for anything--fleshy, sweaty, palpatating, and mixed with lime.
everyone gets down to heavy lidded and pursing, carnal and somehow less than giddy like it started.
but I cant crawl through the flouride mornings anymore, spitting up last nights black grime into the sink
like specks in tap water. not my mouth.

Mrs. Jones

2011-10-03T15:48:00.000-07:00

Mrs. Jones held my chin tight and told me, tight-lipped and dry,what I was,
scorching my strawberry mouthwith her southern gothic stare.

I come back to her when flaring my nostrils over sayings in black and white outside baptist churches:
"love means to fear means to love means to fear.
come to your senses, drop to your knees."

I want to tell her I remember the glint in her eye,
the calculated and narrowed hard glare of prescription drugs, medicating
the feeling that flickered once inside the flourescent lit grocery store
when shopping for off-color tomatoespicked by field workers for a cent a pound,
and though she never thought to imagine where her childrens' foodcame from,
of the hands that knew just when to pluck off the stem,
had she, she would have cursed them like her husband did.

I want to tell her how I know she swallowed herself, down into a sea of bad lighting
and plastic shopping carts,
and swore to drown outany glimmer of fight in any little girl unwilling to kneel,
and lay awake every night in sweat, pesticides, and ghosts.

tell them there on the back porch bout anarchy

2011-09-01T10:48:00.000-07:00

poor white macaroni & cheesehis (poor white male counterpart)beer belly can move 1/4 an inch over his 31 inch waist every 6 months, or year,alcohol swab the lining, finddebt, nightmares about mold in the walls.we can hope I dont get pregnant,or buy a bunch of herbs wide eyed one extraingredient to throw off the cashier girlwith star tattoos.gridding on, grimacing, sticky sex,the fall of the romans; repeated.economy of no sleep to eatbeans and rice, to piss inside.rail against waking up.cook spaghetti together, fight to make enough for cable TV.

hindsight after humidity

2011-07-10T14:19:00.000-07:00

every smell that kept on building compression in my
skull was starting to panic--
I couldnt get past the pain between my eyes,
when you groped for my hands and asked me,
honestly.
but the sweet stench of a thousand lovers
who left me overripe oranges, lemons,
skin cells, mucus, bed sheets, muscle tees,
crushed cans of summer slime
came up.
mostly, I could smell your sweat, like I did
theirs, the fungal smell
of dim witted and drunken bike rides,
blood on bed sheets, bruised knees, dark lips,
breakfast plates, palpatations and flushing red
with bum wine and lake water.
willing the 5 degree difference at night to set me free.

Disproportionate Flashes on Clarity and Murky Water

2011-06-02T16:51:00.000-07:00

I said 'I'm going to grow now.'
I said I would. I went up and out and over.
and uprooted every, any, thing
that stopped the swell that only comes in flashes now,
yellow rising up with the heat, all around me,
wild flowers, full, breathing, open--meeting the empty space
every night I erased and ignored since
the first blood vessel burst in my father's neck
and I bolted.

I want to take fistfulls of daisies and throw them
in the lake where I thought I was in love,
I want to carry them home to my mother and ask her
who will water them, please tell me they have someone
to watch over them-- in the moment where the color
is dull, dropping petals, sinking under the sand
of lake virginia and twisting with the weeds.

some things burst without nurture.

May

2011-05-15T16:11:00.000-07:00

how does it feel to pulse the pulp you wanted
so badly to taste last summer--

when we sat outside drinking cans of something
you'd later think of as the summer of that year.
I couldnt even move most nights it was so hot
that we rode to the elementary school and climbed on
whatever 80s relics hadnt been torn down yet--
and I held a can of whatever you handed me--

and I thought I was in love.

heat can do that. in summer when you cant pay the electric,
when youre showering 7 times a day to function, and you still
stay stagnant.

you wind along days pausing only for going into some mindless
job and leave waiting to get drunk

and sleep next to someone who knows humidity like you do.
it's never enough.

the next summer will bring another lover who
jumps in springwater as though they feel crawls like you do.

2011-04-09T00:40:00.000-07:00

I was trying to catch onto something or sink when your summer was creeping into a syrup sweat. I wanted to submerge under lakewater, warm, home like a sort of brown bubble bath, like water after washing out coffee grinds. When it was time to leave the baths, you promised they'd be waiting on my return. You lost track. Pink mold formed. I waited by the raw khaki shoreline to bring july sunlight, knowing the tide: cold sex in summer: pain like love in one week, a nail through the hand and an ache like sock hop blues in motion past 1955.

the Groan of my 20th Summer Keeps Burning the Back of my Throat

2011-02-23T09:03:00.000-08:00

how does my mother go on like this?

on the backporch her aging hips move to the sounds

her bartending legs used to know--

and she burns at the 20 years I wasted.

I ache with the injected knowledge of her brighter self--

the darker one I've learned from.

in my own place, I curl up to a low-fi haunt of a piano

and wail like wild horses will never stop playing in her

head--and it won't.

why did he show up that night

she and I finally sat out there on the same couch?

the little charmer sat there mumbling--my mother

watching my escape--envious--

and at the crash- 60 down mills, 1822 canton,

his hand on my steering wheel--

the indifference--

it wasn't going to hurt so bad.

I'd be on the backporch again. alone. staring down

by the patron saint of the alcoholics,

waiting for a punchline and getting the boot

in the mouth--the dry tears she and him

heaved so well,

and I never failed to miss that they both looked right over me.

that Summer in the apartment by Lake Virginia

2011-02-07T10:25:00.000-08:00

Listen,

I'm going to write every poem I ever write thinking

about how I'll never get to you,

and how it all goes back to the one time we rode fixed

to the lake late at night over brick roads

feeling nothing but summer and squeezes.

how the humidity stuck your hair in curls

and stuck my swimming suit on my ribs,

how I dove in the seaweed drunk knowing

you'd tease me for crying--

sitting and feeling the heat rise and july constellations

sink down by the water--

about getting in the shower later pulling off clothes

inviting you to come in--

and you, avoiding my best friends chest and laughing.

how that week it was so hot we stayed asleep and took the cat to my mother's

where you claimed

heroism

and me

and my mother believed your curls.

how steam rose up from every shower we took to cool down. how I'd

never burned so hard, and how I didn't ever even turn red that summer.

how I still feel so sore.

mix from mid september

2010-11-29T13:27:00.000-08:00

I pressed my lips between my teeth.

I waited. I swallowed my tongue.

and swelled.

oh. you knew about this car ride back

when you put the beats in time, where

you knew my clavicles would jut toward my heart

and press inward--

saw me filling

with water on the build up,

rattling with base--natural cue for you to take

your hand and place it so to feel me burning--

saw me turning blue gripping the wheel and

remembering the ache on the inside of my ribs.

see, I thought the sound belonged to some shared

summertime grind, a long time groan

that kept on into and stretching itself after every party and

every bleary eyed morning shakey boned

warbling "I-I-I-iii c-can't--be--

stay over again."

one night sometime after about ten renditions of dead flowers,

you didnt.

something else--trying to ignore

what was empty inside you.

Drunk Telepathy

2010-11-22T09:41:00.000-08:00

my brother sat out on the back porch

every night I locked myself in my room,

nodding along as she swayed with rhythms I shut out,

but now feel burning.

her blues seep into every motion I make,

her pointed, faded neon stilettos behind me at every bar,

wild horses playing on repeat.

I don't go anywhere without her anymore.

Real Blues are always Off Key

2010-10-21T18:53:00.000-07:00

and I didnt ask for anything, anyway.

aching over every night I spent in your kitchen, come to:

I could feed every man in America--

serve up a dish so pretty and off handed smiling

he'd try to box me up forever, and at some unclear point

later forget how good that first meal tasted.

Bed Time Post Contract

2010-10-14T21:18:00.000-07:00

it was there for you to study,

ready for your door and all lined up

just the way to lead your neurotransmitters

through my black lines and meetings with

empty space upside down on playgrounds.

I had colors expressed for days, an outline

for 5 years time, a clock hand stretching out

to greet the foot of your root, a placenta'd

moon I stared at every 4 am when you

were in our bed,

rem cycles reverberating panic build up until you

wanted to throw reminders into a trash can. well.

in fact, I'm folding our momento into a paper crane and tonight,

I'll drape it from my ceiling, white like your ghost

under the solitary crescent I clung to.

A Nod to Proper Behavior and Swelling Beats in Tango we Hush.

2010-10-11T08:38:00.000-07:00

blood rushing up through the grass,
dirt under your fingernails,
you held up a fist full of flowers and
tropical weeds,
concentrating on my reds and whites.
thank you for noticing.

I thought you were beautiful, too.
sometimes it's enough to hold hands.

Mama, living in between intersections and 4 grocery stores.

2010-09-30T19:15:00.000-07:00

you have to have an acute sense of what's good for you, or

peripheral vision.

anything else is too forward, which would be rude,

and terribly unpleasant.

who buys the dolls? you do, nickels, 3 months.

I try:

shush my mouth and make heart shapes with styled lips,

make quiet: like the good girl of draperies and shadows in the corridor

we never had.

an imagination like beerlight and tents when no one was watching.

ragtime for the ayrans. keep it extravagant, and don't look down

at the walmart sneakers.

St's Houses

2010-09-20T11:45:00.000-07:00

sometimes I think only the lonely have it--

my mother at the bar my father built

with scraps of stainless steel hits it over the head

with her Bacardi bottle dreaming of

who she will feed her offerings to.

if it were a shrine, I'd lead them hungry souls to her--

at a good time--

and hand them various cutleries,

or maybe extra fingers.

I would have them shove down her shreds of

pork loins , jasmine rices, basil leafs and fresh dill,

her hot peppers for the ones with pallid skin--

I'd pick the ones in black, or the ones

with holes in crusted walmart sneakers, the freckled,

the bowlegged & belted hopeless;

claiming charity to sit at the bottom of the offering plate,

watching handouts disappear and my

mother swell into the infinite

full, finally, so full that she doesn't even need a

hand to touch her.

Anaemic Concerns for those Who also Work with Stainless Steel.

2010-09-11T23:03:00.000-07:00

I tell everyone I know how important it is to feel.

do you have cut?

do you have a mom that bruised you with a frying pan?

we all fit.

I dont care where the pitch fork came from. come home.

let's all hold.

but we never will, because beatnick clout magnestism was just that,

and we're still groping 60 years later. ha, hitch hiker.

the boys Im most likely to believe in come up empty,

they dont know who Di Prima is.

they believe in outlines, and wait for dinner time.

I am a good woman, or will be one day.

8 Dollar Burn Marks because Nothing is like an American Spirit. We Agree.

2010-09-08T19:27:00.000-07:00

pushing seeds into my belly last night,

actually, you were empty.

so are the pru bruises.

have you met all of them with the

care you squandered on the last girl?

she was a vision of your glass eye and framework.

I am a substantiated lack there of, but

I carry kinesthetics at high velocity.

everything pounds, everything smacks,

we don't watch tv, 45 already covered apathy.

21, now your right hand gets it. and my sternum does too.

closest to the center. flesh closet.

gotta to take it further.

23 miles an hour. approximately.

you look good growling, maybe.

alright, good. black enough. we're perfect for each other.

here's some hummus.

here's the corridor to waking up nerved but coping

for the next, what is it now? 60 years.

For Kaycie Gail, via Sylvia

2010-09-01T19:23:00.000-07:00

The word is Burn.

inside the lower intestine,

churn.

it is the mucus lining of the

vaginal wall he stuffed.

the omlet he watched me fry at 6 am

coming up black through my teeth at 6:30

when he leaves in the economy car.

sigh quick,

but don't lean, think, or call.

use telepathy to reach her.

save me.

Im gonna get up and out of here maybe

one day when he leaves and I

remember how bored I am.

I try to get the echoes across

without a sound, so no one cries.

so he doesnt feel the tension crawling

on the walls on return.

hear echoes from reading Lesbos in

the courtyard in 11th grade:

"it's not 1960 we're free like air!"

shhhhhhh. push it down farther.

I'll call her later.

Limits to Depth Perception

2010-08-23T13:27:00.000-07:00

staring through your aryan skin and bone, your moon face expands.

what I've come to know

is the Moon is bigger in some people than in others;

and you, Dear,

caught some of it in your Iris while you

were up there climbing around one night.

1983

2010-08-10T23:32:00.000-07:00

I want to know the inside of your dirt.

I want to know the browns of your mouth screaming at me

fall down and cry.

I want to give you the satisfaction of a win,

but I'll never give you a bump

or a capillary big enough for cuts as deep as you deserve--

as much as I want to matter.

Blood Oranges and Bell Peppers

2010-08-09T15:33:00.001-07:00

Mother,
who takes time to water wild flowers?

standing against the windowsill I watched
you water the garden.

every basil leaf you ever put in
the crock pot made it
to my belly knowing its creator
inside and out--
the root of the hands
that connected in dirt, the entrails
of the ovaries that birthed it.

I am inside out and reeling.

I kneel down in gardens
looking for the yellow tomatoes
you threw in a basket last season
saying

there, there,
my last offering.

Paneling

2010-07-31T01:34:00.000-07:00

my mother was standing at the door unsure
of whether to yell or cry;
and I wasn't old enough to give her the satisfaction of both.
you still didn't know what it was to look up
and see hurt.
had you built it over the years we wouldn't be here today.
I couldnt give you the fingers you craved
because they were pounding out
years that you would never be able to hold on to,
and even if you tried to burn that hard you would
never face scars that bad.
how tired you must be, darling,
and with nothing really to blame--
daddy's money, maybe, and a blank expression
at my pocket full of dimes.

Highway 1, Orange County to Big Sur

2010-07-28T22:41:00.000-07:00

the point is,
I've only been to the redwoods once,
and I know they didnt want me
to come back.

burning, I looked at some plastic beaches
and decided if I even made it back to board the plane

I'd stay home next summer.
I wasnt ready to give
a smile.

I was looking out at the pacific ocean thinking
maybe the sand would erode my skin away,
but I came back to Florida like ever,

and looked in some dumb fuck's eyes
again, asking where Laura went, and
if he ever met a girl who
knew where the body went after
a night like this,
after a cluster fuck of bad connections
and energy drinks.

if I ever make it back to the
Pacific coast,
make sure the only thing I have is a carry on,
and the only thing
I want is 62 degree water.

Why I Don't Call Home.

2010-06-27T19:36:00.000-07:00

sometimes I wonder if I'm going to spend
the rest of my life wondering how to
draw daggers.
I've got a clear picture in my head
when I wake up empty again,
when I look at the dry male toothbrush,
when I grab the hand in the pocket that says "retract!"
when I bump lips goodbye with some
disinterested mouth that goes sideways.

Pamela, if you had been watching
me this morning you would
have been shaking your head.

Trying to Channel Pamela

2010-06-07T18:28:00.000-07:00

all the boys just like him 25 years ago
were buried under her piles of heels,
or are now stuck
hiding out in garages, bellies full of extra age,
drinking beers, watching games
to wipe away the rotting smell of a terribly
fat big breasted stringy haired beast
who still tries to purse her lips
like she did back then
when she went in for the kill,
my mother's daggers waiting.

that woman burned every hair
on his head when I stole
glances and bit the inside of my lip
wondering how to draw a blade.

It'll Take About Another Year to Run Through Every Girl in Orlando who Pretends to Love Leonard Cohen.

2010-06-06T08:38:00.000-07:00

when you woke up wednesday morning
to my arms pressing yours awake
did you think to yourself
"Well, she doesn't have any food
left in the fridge?"

you were right.
yesterday I went grocery shopping for
myself
and I bought peanut butter
I don't have to hide

because her
pantry is stocked, and she
probably appreciates you
eating it for her.

Clutching Camel Turkish Golds at Sarah's.

2010-05-28T11:18:00.000-07:00

I fell down screaming God God God
because you would love me.

and for a second I thought you did
on pink carpet.

but now that I know you
like God, in the pink sheets,
on the floor of some party
with someone else's ice cubes
and record player,

I know what God is;
and it is two mornings after,
staring up at holes in the ceiling,
alone, getting up to
grope for whatever bottle is
left in the freezer.

it is flat and without remorse.
a tense verb on the outside
of a shoelace if we walk past each other,
and it wasn't God's idea
at all.

Bargain Hunting

2010-05-25T19:57:00.000-07:00

I took all the bones I could,
and tossed them into a pile
where I crawled inside my
own eye.

if no one can feel my bones,
I will crawl over and under,
picking at the femurs of

those bones I grazed,
and those bones they never guessed I stole
from under them to make
miles of desolate hands and dried salt,
old nights piled one on top of the other,
keeping my own locked

into an iris whose color none
of those bones ever remembered.

Home Grown Screwdrivers

2010-05-18T16:07:00.001-07:00

I am mothering now; vodka and laundry,
quiet in the house.
my belly is a burden filled with the seeds
of some orange grove I visited
last summer,
and now distilled in the rubbing water,
expanding.
I have grown around and over
your hands, your feet,
your rust green eyes,
your dirt and grime and rot,
your maggots in the grapefruit soil.
I cannot carry my roots with me,
I cut them and tie them with string
for later, my sinews and capillaries
feel the pressure moving through
until the orange juice burst
at the vein, when
you realize all my matter
fermented during the spin cycle.

I'm Trying to Forget that Night I Thought You Were a Fleetwood Mac Fan

2010-04-27T18:36:00.000-07:00

take this fine tooth comb:
I'm trying to pick out all the sounds
I didn't mean when you pulled my hair.

Know Bones

2010-04-26T17:00:00.000-07:00

could you feel my bones last night?
in every concave, all the pillows
falling down beneath the bed, and my back
pressed into the corner, my wrinkled pink sheets,
and the cat licking your toes--
I wanted you to know my bones.
every spur and brittle old break--
the soft ones that you try to curl inside--
and bone of the eye, white of the shoulder points--
bones that will crumble and lose calcium
and hold LSD way after I'm a flower.
bones can't be loved except in moments
like that because
you won't remember it later,
and I'll feel it in sense memory, when
I find a sock on the floor.
that must be what it is every time,
knowing bones; and it should be enough.

On time in the Florida citrus farms

2010-04-24T06:58:00.000-07:00

you know, even if you had lifted the blossom
at exactly the right time, reaching up and gently
through the grove,

the grapefruit would have known better;
because you weren't ready for her season.

she still would have fallen toward the root
anyway, the rinds resigned to rot into the soil.
and you watch,

wondering how you missed her soft peach yellow
ripening, how you left the juice to seep through
black-green holes

Florida gnats ready for the harvest you missed.
Your rust green eyes alarm at the swarm,

because you still haven't learned the rhythms,
and next year around this time,
the grapefruit tree will be laughing quietly.

Grapefruit Wine

2010-04-21T10:07:00.000-07:00

it's rank; not quite, bloody legs
uncrossed and almost purple.
you watch the alabaster uprising
from the bed to the door
unsure of how to connect
the pigment to sun, because,
just like the sweat in the sheets, it's
pungant, sticking, sighing, unwashable.
it's tired, not worth strain, thinking
about chemistry, broken blood vessels,
ocean waves or sunscreen.

I guess this is about failure.

how you crawled in and expanded,
and pressed down hard, crying for
fermentation, for consummation,
which I could never give you,
because I didn't know when I'd ripened,
and you were busy,
delirious, aging me, thinking of the
oranges in time, sap that
showed so well on bleached skin,
and missed the season.

Pollen Season

2010-04-07T10:25:00.000-07:00

in the mornings where the cat
was down by your toes, hiding under the blanket,
waiting for your large hand to swoop down, for
nose licks,
we were so sure of the pollen electricity, dandalion fluffs in love with bees,
our solid parts in the sheets,
we never thought to look.

the oranges were falling
down and the juice was turning back into root,
the strawberries were pesticides and a dollar
a basket, if we ever got out of bed
to pick them;
but we didn't look, we didn't need to;
it was safe for whenever,
summertime, rinds, when the haircuts were
waiting.

Highway 415

2010-04-05T15:08:00.000-07:00

foot bent backward and leg angled

toward the mouth, peach, purse,

forward.

quick, if you angle your eyes sideways

it seems like he loves you--or

something pink, harping, open mouthed--

point is, you have enough fuel to fill up on.

yeah, he's got your hips and hand, and

smug, ego'd, he thinks your eyes--green,

glazed, going for sunshine, back scratches,

tanning lotion, grass smells, 5 years old;

he keeps, over

cow pastures, and all you wanna do

is turn the volume up higher.

warning for the almost dead passed out on the carpet

2010-03-29T18:01:00.000-07:00

already admitted to all the darkest,
deep down reddish brown hughes--
what else was left but

"okay, it can't get w----"
cracking lines and 2.50 fare,
I know that square jaw anywhere.

you brought your blanket over and
laid across the floor, bones, sliding eyes,
and I saw home bubbling in your spit:

beach winds and crumbling dunes and
makeshift forts; scruff of the neck
shivers all the ghosts from underneath
toes in every old apartment--

and "shit gets bad real quick sometimes"
sunheavy eyes closed stretching lips making
unwords from the belly only I hear
while you turn over on the carpet.

Disheveled Tom, and Unlucky.

2010-02-28T15:35:00.001-08:00

if I found you outside my window,
toeing through withering tomatoes and
dry basil leaves, I'd ask if you'd met the
cactus flower whose nightly reverie
abrupts at my alarm clock dream burst,
and if you looked down and away,
I'd ask you, why, did she prick you?
disheveled
tom, and unlucky--
at 4 am she was a ghost, curling white and
delicate,
while I slept right behind her,
and you waited for green dew, motion.
what early pinks and oranges brought
closed her up, and it's a shame you missed
the real show.
is that your finger bleeding?

Cute, a Car Crash.

2010-02-20T19:01:00.001-08:00

swerve, nerves, sandwich dreams,
tooth out, red, eyelid twitch, but
with more point than a german
offizier pointing the gun bei ihnen! now!
guilt flash.
dispairing is too Victorian,
are you rosebud pink? have you
not read Freud?
think about the anatomy of x's,
passengers, sirens.
in the '96 toyota,
I wonder could we stop for a second?
because I really want some french fries
before I do this.

Subversive Screws Triggering Eye Widening Hope, but it's Probably just a Fluke.

2010-02-01T19:41:00.000-08:00

a small comfort like identity built into some
building whose founders have no idea--
I could kiss the man who did that--and
I would-- but I'd probably fall in love,
or something pink and rosebush
similar-- and it'd turn out, bed rolled
and east sun tossled, after,
he wore tan work boots, ate frozen
pancakes, and carried a screwdriver
with star shaped screws he'd
never even noticed
before--
a nice man who slept in on Sundays and
only knew David as the neighbor with
the 60 in. flatscreen.

for jackie

2010-01-13T10:30:00.000-08:00

at 4 am
I am reminded
of why we love.
all your songs
from the north
trickle down to
me hear--
sweetly,
even when the
winter freezes
the nectar of
our pulse,
our orange trees--
and only you
have felt that
same song here,
hurting in the
summertime,
sweltering and
swimming in juice,
sticky in the
septic ocean, bathing
in our chlorine
baths.

rituals in moderation

2010-01-05T10:35:00.000-08:00

stepped into the shower
expectant; the cold shooting
pain first and then the sighing warm
of purified city water;

just got a wine bath.
every movement squishing
sangria looking down onto
every fruit I've ever had,
refusing to come clean.

it isn't water; it isn't water,
it's the dirty cricks of
north carolina full up
with plums, and oranges
come in from florida,

a million popping strawberries
under my stained feet,
gingerly stepping with my
big toes, trying for water,

finding instead all your fruits
who can't even stand to be named.

Concrete Ache

2009-12-21T23:04:00.000-08:00

it was just,
I couldn't hold you,
so I didn't.
and everything kept on anyway.

119th, Paris

2009-12-12T13:14:00.000-08:00

you never even made it to the window
duck taped open, rattling with the
trains, and dirty;
tight-wound short-lipped and too proud to
stare down into the Seine.
you wanted loose ends, like
windsails across the
grey road, catching on hooklines
pathetic as their aging fisherman
tired of black brown carp with
third eyes, lives paper wrapped and waiting
next to a basket bleeding
purple with old plums.
you wanted non-commital footsteps out and old traces,
bleak loaves left rotting, waiting.
the creaking wooden bed, the ratty sheets,
my apron creased on the scratched old table-- our
crumbling dissallusioned hearth.
the canal isn't wide enough, though-- nothing is,
you'll learn,
to divide you from what you left in
brown corners, all the ancient grime
you couldn't bear.

February

2009-12-05T22:08:00.000-08:00

was it sleeping inside you?
all this time
while I waited,
going
strawberry picking
every damn day
basket stained red
with over ripe juice
and never enough
to fill a pie?

sandbox

2009-11-27T11:14:00.000-08:00

you stare forward
content like the King of
tonka trucks and lizard hunting,
dirt.

you burble and spew,
and my word sounds climb
ropes around my ears,
boiling.

empty son, fill up with
my water weight.
soon enough,
the oceans.

Brother

2009-10-26T20:39:00.000-07:00

brother asks for a light again,
change for the corner store,
some bread.

what do I have to give now?
my fool memory,
charelston childhood,
halloween in the pine trees--
our old swingset falling down,
rusted.

I can give fifty four cents,
and glances that kick up old dirt,
our little feet reaching
for the branches above the
old house, the shingles,
the floating dead orange leaves
quiet,
bringing in our harshest winter.

Hoarders

2009-10-18T18:04:00.000-07:00

your mother's hair
blown dry 54 years
slumps past cereal boxes,
stirs some instant morning

to keep her glued
and you--

grunt b flat "I love you."
well she sits down
and shakes her coffee
awake.

she smears lipstick once
across her line mouth
listing your day because
men love facists too.

need, she says.
and you do.

your sense memory feels
every day for the past
20 years she gave you
the same beady stare.

"today you stay,"
it's easier to.

you will not walk out
the way you thought through.
sit down, honey, ricket
back till night comes in

when her jitters ease
and her cigarette slips
and the dog laps it up
along with you.

Ripe

2009-09-28T21:02:00.000-07:00

your lover in the shower
dripping with
tangerine mush
flowing from her mouth
to her feet
the seeds stuck in the drain

and the orange blood
sticking here
on her chest
and there on her thigh

and you.
biting her mouth to
bleach out the scent
water--you--can't wash out.

you think only of
sweet stenching sun
ripened stickiness;
sticking your hand into
white blossoms
wet and caked in soil.

you stare at her wet body
under the shower head.
you will take her back
to the orange grove
where she birthed you--

your rooted lust,
whifs of her blossoms

Concubine Quiet

2009-09-23T23:09:00.000-07:00

what deep breaths sink down
into her chest and burn
in her heart?
she doesn't know patience
like I do.

she doesnt know the
gathering of being, quietly,
drawing up the knees into
the chest,
sighing all hours waiting
and never crying out.

Orange Seeds

2009-09-09T19:11:00.000-07:00

I bite through the orange peel
tasting thin flesh and
runny wine
Like your hemophiliac blood.

Another try from the grove,
but your scent is still in the soil.
I think
your feels may never leave the roots.

Spitting out orange seeds
blood red and sour it's
always you
at the end of my tongue.

ten percent at 2 am

2009-08-29T12:26:00.000-07:00

I shiver awake.
your night time blues are calling.
they arrive heat heavy and longing
at 2 am.
when
only I
only I
can fix it.

from portugal, darling,
you surfaced in crecents
moon hidden and shameful-- from
her blood womb's waiting room,
from georgia barreling down i95,
from her bed when she lay
there sleeping.

I cooed, I cooed
for you.
like a burden
I forwent my own bed.
and waited, and waited
for your longing
to arrive.

but I ache, I ache
with your heaviness.
every shiver pleads no.
this time your longing
will go no farther than
her ears.

Morning Coffee

2009-08-20T09:31:00.000-07:00

what's left of you is wholly in me,
what aches in the morning is a ghost.

do you wake up with my taste in your mouth?
do you lurch at the fleeting shivers of my hands
in your bed?
or do you brush them off in her hair?
in my single room, the sun hits the dresser
you held me against.
I stare at the coffee I made for one.

Forgetting

2009-08-11T17:41:00.000-07:00

he couldn't even walk out the door most nights.
the bed was craving.

eventually, when I became less real, more vapor,
he pawed less.
most nights I fell asleep half hazed.
once or twice, he pressed my shoulder, hoping
I would fall asleep facing him.
after that, he faced the other direction, too.

now that his body no longer knows mine,
I want to know the phases of his comfort.
I want to crawl inside his bones and rest,
at least another week or two.
another shoulder tap, a grab, his
holding grip--
all of it, all of it! sinks into the old mattress,
forgetting us like our time never was.

Morphine Sulphate Mattress Dream

2009-08-10T21:06:00.000-07:00

the slim legs dangling over the mattress have
a last smoke.
that image is the last one.
but then, who were they to know?
young bodies in the morning, careless
with forever.
just a singed image in one brain, now.
no one else can see vapor.
there's not even a shadow
to stake claim to every night
spent sweating, pushing, hurting,
crying, ah, all those long months.
what sinks to the floor afterward?
and what is it now? blood?
is that a heart pinned to the door?
what aching valves said stop.

Night Harvesting

2009-07-27T20:02:00.000-07:00

the caterpillars gather quietly along the parsley,
and sometime in the night their fat bellies
start digesting slower.
the owls and rats are closer.
whatever sings inside the earth grows darker,
everything crowds together.
it isn't safe anymore.

I worry inside my window,
if in the morning they will be asleep in the dew.
I don't want to see them in the grass,
one harsh nights' harvest.

At a Park Close to Where Everything Crashed

2009-07-13T09:43:00.000-07:00

I am jealous of your upward motion.
it pains me to watch you drifting over
highways, toward certain death.
at least in me, you would have had a
gentle collapse.
the sour reminder that freed balloons
pop or
whither slowly in unyielding deserts
crosses your eyes, I see it.
but you shake it off, afraid my roots
will consume you.
fine. I will stretch out, destroying cement,
hitting wires, causing chaos city
officials think is just routine.
But I have always known of the women
inside these lonely trees, lifting their roots to
claim some small thing that is
rightfully their own.
it is the least that can be done.
all else that was stolen drifts away
after nesting awhile,
or gets paved over.

The Creator.

2009-07-08T21:38:00.001-07:00

I birthed the wolves, darling.
I held you in my arms.
I curled around your blood.
I watched the moon, I held you up.

and from you came nothing.
from you came nothing.

I smirked as you nursed.
I gave you all.
for granted you wanted marrow.
who was I to say no?

did you except a well?
they dry up.
I wither.
those were my own howls.

Sirens

2009-07-06T22:41:00.000-07:00

I burn all his ships.
I wait for ghosts I have created.
death smelling of sea salt
rushes in daily.
like most women, I
surrender in his wake,
but fire up at the crash.
yes, of course it's coming.

love is always told
as a ghost story, afterward,
a past tense shadow following
sometimes corners and
Anchoring every time
the waves blend in
with wailing women.

I am no anchor, I am flesh.
I am salted wet and dripping.
It hasn't been long enough yet.

Lamenting Moth

2009-06-29T19:47:00.000-07:00

sometimes with my eyes closed
I can feel your breath antennae
moving in and out of my perception.
when close,
I can taste the sweet stench of your
nearness, and how I used to want to
curl up inside your bones.
I wanted to stay inside your
eye, because it would be
focused on me forever.
your carpet bag, your fading clothes,
my mothball home.
but most of the time,
the static fuzz of your
ill-focused affection creates
a pastel chaos I cannot bear.

Soft

2009-06-15T10:34:00.000-07:00

the fear hits hard like burning whiskey.
he's not drinking with me, either.
for some reason that crys out heartbreak.

I hold reality out my window warning him
feebly as I may.
he scurries from me, I drop it from the high beam.
somehow I end up the ashamed dog.

Drifters

2009-05-30T08:58:00.000-07:00

that I couldn't feel you with my mouth

hit slowly, in waves.

bumping lips clumsy like

bumping into sand dunes

drunk on the inlet at nighttime,

of course I bruised,

purple rings sore and dry from

so much salt the morning after.

gathering us together in daylight,

an impossible sea salted struggle.

old adages stung burned skin.

the sea is for drifters, not lovers.

I cannot be both.

Israel's Gulf Coast, 2 am

2009-04-26T21:55:00.000-07:00

just as his gulf quarters start to
sweat, my inland gasps, salted,
rusting, overwhelm
his humid spaces.
he reaches for a phone
but shakes it off;
it can wait until the black air
is as thick as our blood, the
alcohol content thicker.

here,
his mother's loneliness attaches itself
to my infinite ache, stretching out amongst the
rotting quilts and feathers.
my ache is so common to her--
what his deep, somber voice
did to that rattling frame.

and I--
I crawl in circles around Israeli
peaks shaped like bedsheets,
bowing over in his
Jerusalem,
glancing over a dissallusioned
Eden
I cannot reenter.
painfully, I'm sure, he molded it
for such a sinner.

I inhabit the outskirts
where he commanded.
I stalk the leaves that trembled
under our weight,
groping for an unassuming
spider.
it was a spider; no fruit.
he wanted me more sinister than that.

Keeping Watch on the Bar Girl

2009-04-06T12:59:00.000-07:00

whose eyes are those
covered by anxious hands
gnarled and saddened
by her bleak repose?
his hair hangs heavily
down his back; what job
is his? what home is his?
what matted, mossy
mattresses does he keep?
and when he sleeps, yellow
and stained, does he lift
his arms to the girl, that
vaporous girl,
whose coy eyes and
round hips shift again and
again, slower each weighted
hour?
what blundering glances
does he think she'll revel in?
laughing quieter, nervous, spraying
down counters, bending into
bottles,
does he think her hips know
gravity other than pressure
on sore tile?
the night is so grave.
she has attempted covering
deep purple pits under brightly
colored eyes.
how can he bear to love her,
pressing his pained hands
in his eyes-- her who
smiles for a tip, wags for a sale?
oh, oh, his mouth pressed so
firmly down, when the lights go off.
she's sighing.

Mourning

2009-03-30T19:59:00.000-07:00

surrendered to air that asked for silence
at 1 am, at least--
crucified underbellies of howls spill out.
how my lips naw at escaped sounds that cannot be swallowed.
I asked for him, again,
and again, the silence ate my words, returning nothing.

who allowed him this?
I asked that he evaporate that night
of blue and yellow underpinnings.
but his absence surfaced more.
goosebumps laced with
his mouth's old traces, he carried me
into morning; even the down feathers
were smiling well past 4 am.
but the bleak sheets were
fully aware of my one soft body
shifting in fevors he casually
dispatched for alarm's sake,
when he searched my eyes,
my mouth, my hair, my breast,
and recoiled.
nothing smiles after rem cycles full with
longing.
at least in the morning I am silent.

The Strawberry Festival Tree

2009-03-24T20:00:00.000-07:00

codeine baking our
stawberry jello corneas,
our skin.
your sweet stale stench of cigarettes
breathing wants, grasping arms,
inhaling.
but
shrugging away,
you were
glinting like armor.
you held off,
closing your eyelids
tilting lazy toward
the sweating sun,
our nervous laughter
falling on my
toes like tears
I'd cry later for you
sitting under
the same sun,
the same dew
evaporating
off the green
that our bleary brains
projected Gods into.

Response Lament

2009-03-22T13:10:00.000-07:00

but we're all lonely,
-----.
we scratch all night
at pockmarks no one will love,
tossing over and over
again on our whiskied bellies
crying god, god, god,
when no one listens.
we eat communion wafers
off chipped china
begging for sustinance
other than soft arms
and nuzzled necks.
oh, oh, oh,
I want you to know
how long the longing wait,
and how some never rise.
how eager arms grasp air
when strawberry picking.

Sylvia, I Identify.

2009-02-24T14:24:00.000-08:00

Sylvia, I identify.
Americana that defines,
with your wisp, light brown,
your crushed diamond eyes,
Sylvia, your
moon must be
the same moon
as mine. with aries
rising through your
tides, with daddy's
old urges pressed
in your sides,
Sylvia, it is aligned.
your womb feels the same
terror as mine, an
alien cry, a terrible lie.
Sylvia, I shudder that you
let him decide
with a bruise
on your neck for a life,
but neither did I, decline.
Sylvia, I identify, I.

futile

2009-02-11T12:47:00.000-08:00

My cervix is hard hit for
emotion, so many times pressed
into the springs unsure
of decay in decades and
too sure of time bombs
Billowing up in baby doll
dresses all around me
C section messes and
WE TV tiny feet bleeding--
Animal meat in a pulse.
Every four weeks an alien
possibility attached too much
real time worry, half smile
Dreams of eyes that look
like yours but waking
Working punching bag uterus--
it cannot be a child.

ghost woman.

2009-01-09T14:01:00.000-08:00

she's going to barcelona,
you will never forget.
she's going to barcelona and you still
caress her name.
and her nose is too long for
barcelona,
with beautiful women
who have vacant eyes.
why her?
in barcelona a mouse couldn't be more
coveted.
and you will pine.
and I will know.

I'll have no refrain
but pursed lips and a
catholic stare.
you will pine in your corner.

in barcelona
there will be other men.
you will write her about them.
how glad.
in barcelona she will not
even belong to your memory.
you will be slave to hers.

Clean

2008-12-23T15:14:00.000-08:00

She scorches herself with water
and blinks up into the shower head.
"I never want to feel anything but this water
again."
She runs through lists of men who eyed her drunken contours
good enough for a fuck, or maybe not.
They don't remember her later and in passing she
cannot look them in the eyes the way she did
on the floor smirking lightly.
those 2 ams she has no memory
of red steam rising over shower curtains.

Barbara

2008-11-26T10:44:00.000-08:00

I paid that glaucomic hag's electric bill with
my grandmother's ghost.
she gave a vague description of
twenties styled hair and nodding off to a revoltingly
sincere painting of Jesus, cartoon feet conspicuously placed,
"no one ever shows his feet in pictures,"
I wondered if she believed the bullshit she sold.
who buys into cassadaga, anyway, with it's main street
of falsified hauntings and stories,
the medium dying in a shingled front porch with rusting wire fence.
I guess they figure 60 dollars is a fair price for whimsical cemeteries
that may or may not be real.
she does not know barbara, just like I do not know barbara,
her voice of california, bermuda, tokyo, of mansions and ceramic dolls
she promised but gave away in gibberish to whoever stood in her parlour.