January 2009
6 posts
Response to Reading the First Chapter of a...
Baby blue-eyed clairvoyant
heart coughing up the mucus of sentimentality
Her savior hands against the glass,
pressed against the grubby hands of a foreign
child crying: Death! Infection! Radiation!
Still other voices cry from the television screen,
a buzz in her apocalyptic ear: Death to tropes,
to the movies we’ve seen before!
She bounces her fist against her breast.
It beats: I...
I preferred our private love
shut behind bathroom doors in
the porcelain of the tub
eyes pressed hard against the water
Now in the ocean, water down
from the cold of Alaska. Goosebumps,
seaweed’s slime around our ankles
The dogs are skipping along the beach,
barking us back to shore
Dream
Do you know how much
I
love you?
Ten-twenty. A crisp ten-
dollar bill and two
dimes.
ADMITTED NYC DEC 23 2008
Welcome home to cheeseburgers, asshole security
UR bag does NOT need a bin JUS
LAY it on the belt. Okay.
I take off my boots, unbelt my coat
unbelt my waist, put my laptop
in a separate bin. NOW. Let’s see, we have
two cheeseburgers, says the mom to the girl
at my back, One cheeseburger for now
and one for later. I’m craving a cucumber-
Edamer cheese sandwich. I have a water bottle,...
you in-
sulted the elevator boy and
here we are again
stuck somewhere between
floors 18 and 30
crawling along the inside of walls
and it’s all
acres of lust
yards of we should have never come
After a Four-Month Absence
A breeze elbows through the crowd of
just-arrivals shuffling into SUVs
and great-aunt kisses.
Rag-doll tired on a bench, my fingers fondle
the strange currency in my wool coat
pocket. They slip against Washington’s worn face, sweaty.
December 23. My top buttons unbuttoned, for breathing.
A shuttle bus picks up the wind and
a few suited men, all determined with their leather laptop cases....