Did I get your eyes right
in yesterday’s poem?
I’m tired of thinking of all you dead.
The black masks of your graves,
the visions you stir in me.
before the sky has gone to weeping, the trees
are scarred & bleeding sap. Chewed to ruin
by moths building tents in their leaves.
around 1, behind the H & M,
to send hot Caleb from Chem 6
who texted me a pic of his cousin in a ski mask
I’m offered a water, and a tea, so I take both, because I’m thirsty. And the more options the better,
or so I tell myself.
On the streets, these crowded lines of stores
and delivery trucks idling, the backfire
of my manager’s Chevy is my father’s hand
The forest is never silent. Each rock
waits its turn. The river misleads:
impatience is rare. In the valley,
Christopher’s Bar is all full up and Liquor World is closed already.
So I wander down the avenue looking for someplace to take me in,
clutching a Brautigan in my coat in case I need some conversation.
Now it’s all smoke and climbing high
into the tree-houses of the unconscious,
He took my hand, led me to the bathroom, opened the door and slipped in. The bathroom was dark. Through the partially opened window, an apartment with a yellow breakfast nook.
Read MoreInfection. I loll my head to the side in
the dim stillness, you loll your head into
mine.
Kenneth has his pecker out
again. We can see him
from the window, twisting his hips
I won a fraternity kissing contest
in college. I still have the photo—
chubby dumpling me, squeezed
Today I am staying in my t-shirt and underwear
with so much sadness
in every ounce of my body,
Swimming laps in the sound to erase the head
cold he can’t seem to shake. Small doses
As I stand in line at the bank
an armored car pulls up and the guard comes in.
They do not make iced coffee here
and Fox News is bolted to the ceiling,
cranky as an old crow.
I used to sleep with this guy who studied Japanese ghosts in literature. He’d talk about them while I was trying to go to sleep and the names stuck in my head long after I’d forgotten his.
Read Morethe sun went down about a half mile from here. 1
we watched it settle over the houses and fall away,
finally, into the shoulders of every living thing around.
the rain sings insistence, sings like a tinfoil package
Everything in baseball is measurable:
Men stand sixty-feet-six-inches from the pitching rubber
with pine-tarred bats & dirty palms.