Curses and Stickpins

Writing is to speaking
as burnt hair is to lightning;
perhaps this is why
I prefer to draw.

Writing is sandbox to the battlefield,
it is play full grown. To speak is to stage. I find my pleasure
in the press of charcoal to soft, cream paper. I find my pleasure
where I will.

To speak of writing requires something fermented,
sticky and sick and ghastly sweet, left to
congeal in a pickle jar poorly rinsed.
Wouldn't you rather hold that bottle,
tilt it to the side, note the viscosity
then put it back on its homemade wooden shelf,
and back out of the room, and quietly shut the door?

I am concerned mostly with Rube Marquard,
and opal, and a curse:
I have lived in this city for ten
long years, and the traffic reports still sound to me
like spells, powerful hexes
that leave me foreign and affected.

I have flung totems into rivers before, into cold waters,
and it's not such an odd sentiment--if
these were older moments, we might even ask some god
of sweep and dissolution to protect us,
to carry away all poisons. We will lose
games, and pen the articles
of frustration, and later, when everyone else is gone,
we will gather the words unused, and make a little joke
for those that loved us anyway
as if to say "I'm sorry, it was always a third thing."

A Single Honest Thing

You say: I'm not prepared to drive another mile in this dark
with animals crossing the road
the way you stumble through the bedroom:
rubbing sleep from your eyes,
lifting your shirt to clean your glasses,
murmuring something about the library

So we get out and stretch and
I'd like to use a different word, of course, but let us be real
here and now:
those stars are completely
fucking
twinkling

we stretch, and climb some small hill,
a precarious pile of rocks,
and then we sit
a little apart, but near enough to touch
if it comes to that
up here on our mesa
in this non-metaphorical desert,
under these stars

stars shining,
honest to god,
earnestly

we lay flat, and feel the way
a person might feel
while laying flat on their back beneath
an omnipresent sky: vaguely moved,
non-specifically struck,

and there is quiet
and we think, together

with nothing to stop us
but ourselves,
here on this black stone

say to me one
single
honest
thing

and we each say together
nothing could be more difficult
or more beautiful

beautiful is a word I would never use
to describe a notion
back home
in the city

and perhaps then we touched
or perhaps not
but either way, I thought
what
the fuck
has the desert done to us?

Sound/Space/Legume

When you seek space, you are located. It envelops, develops,
presumes, consumes, gently,
so gently, it entombs

Sound/Space/Legume
Stax soul/kitchenette/black beans
with rice, slicing bell peppers and swaying
humming and mumbling, dreaming as small as we dare

those little prayers, whispered between tasks
will find the cracks
the weakened buttresses
the weekend mattresses

what sort of being sets its own
mold? Defines its own parameters? Draws
its own boundaries, in ink,
in a language of
its own devising?

Sound/Space/Legume
birds/bed/coffee
the gentle indentation of
confused giddiness
still, stillness

what sort of being sets its own mold
and is then surprised to see
its final shape?

the deployed plastic
the drained hot metal
loose in your apartment
loosed in your compartments

Sound/Space/Legume
The hiss of a braking train/the snowy station platform/a small hot cup of lentil soup
held tight, in both hands, sipped carefully
waiting for you, to step out, walk back
through the damp weighty air
into home

Let's Make It Instead

It's easy to imagine
myself, unshaven, forgotten
apartment
listings on a sheet
of folded graph paper
creased soft under
my fingers

how's the water pressure
check
are pets allowed
check
where do you get pets
check
and

has it ever been haunted

and the guy laughs
a little and shakes
his head

and I say
I'll fix that

Washout Harvest

Sawed off just a right - for makes alone
mine and me in correct consecutive
Tuesdays, in Nigeria

careful, the downtrodden understand us, warrant a hunger, a trigger, a sneaker. Raspberry
Suede: the letter: happy hiring. Up
one run, the sick stomach drop
boasting is losing season

A hit (ballerina-length)
is a torn hamstring, a congressman, a smattering of appalls. These kids, a composite
loss; they fire loch, they shed plague, they breathe deep graphite

furthermore standing in nylons nevermeans            in socks, in powder blue.
Really, then, it was a date with the Kansas City Royals
that provided the cure.

Mother and Child

the past is a vacuum and

it’s horriblehollow—

the inside is just lint

and shame—

the past is a space where

dirty things are stored—

in the same small,

reusable womb—

most of it is just fluff

from the carpet, the

fabric of living, stirred and soiled

by feet and soda,

unbirthed back inside as

she pushed across the carpet—

I mean she moved across the carpet—

and I fled into the bedroom,

scared of the hollow sound—

the roar of the suction—

I heard the ringing in my ears

of creation

from the kitchen

—your mother is calling—

You think the phone

is ringing but

it’s difficult to say—

the vacuum is so loud—

don’t let the machine get it

pleasedontletthemachinegetit

The Histrionics of Game Shows

I’m not making this up, and I’ve got a right to say it:

Polo was my game, and my mallet was the sky.

But I’ve no memory of my history, and

now it’s just myself, and a pretty

freckled orphan in some cat’s pajamas. Also, it seems, a dog.

“Don’t give my dog chocolate, because it’ll make his stomach

swell up and explode,” she said.

I watched her

face, small as hope,

small as pixels, every fresh outburst

a little prayer. The sun sets

like a southerner, sighing,

easing down on the porch.

Memory is a passionate pillow kiss

at eleven, a

sordid mock mop tango

to boot. Your fingers run down

it’s hair, your eyes are ablaze.

and history, oh!

history has ever been a game show,

a silly indulgence for academics

and lonely mothers. And we each

choose a deity—Barker, the Immortal, or

Wise Trebek, or maybe Louie Anderson,

maybe. He’s the Nietzschian candidate.

It’s yours like a jockstrap, though;

no sense in pretending someone wants that.

  

“You mean pigeons,” I said. “And probably Alka-Seltzer,”

but she was already busy with breakfast—

She folded little stars into an omelet, removed
her apron
and clicked

the hanging chain.