7.13 / November 2012
Three Poems
The Wolf
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After love he cannot hear the wolf
lie down outside our bedroom door
or feel its wild ache twisting through the mountains
inside me, this bed a terrace empty
of heaven’s marble figures. No twice-
barricaded walls or sky full of hollows,
just he the blind shepherd counting
drops of moonlight with [...]
Four Poems
I Fall in Love with Every Attractive Woman I Meet (#5)
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There’s a space between us, I shout, but Cammie thinks I’m speaking in car-lengths. Above us, an aluminum net sparks & whirrs. We pin a young boy’s bumper car into a corner & laugh like Kansas is [...]
Five Poems
History of a Hymen: Age 7
Bike-riding along Kelso Road-
the front spokes caught my purple purse.
With the seize and stop my crotch launched
banana seat into bar-hard.
Pain water balloon burst and clot.
My steps small, slow all the way home
told Mom I was torn like cardboard
and ached like the bleeding gum
of a tooth [...]
Pym’s Story
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Pym’s second cousin fucked her when she was still a girl, is where it started, apparently. He visited frequently during the tender nub of her pubescence. Then, Easter, 1998 or 99: years blur into each other like letters at the optometrist. Pym’s mom woke before dawn and [...]
The First Thing the Stupid Bitch Does is Fall in Love
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Second thing she does is slide into heels so high she doesn’t have to stand on tiptoe for shit.
Third thing the bitch does is throw every appliance into a snow bank. They’ll still be good in the spring.
Unsure what makes her stupid? Take this five question quiz [...]
Drag
Bonnie, Jack, and Tal take the whole case out to the dock behind the bay house, lay down under the moon and drink. The wood beneath them smells like old blood because it is soaked in old blood.
A dog they don’t know starts pounding up the dock, stops when he [...]
Jesus Didn’t Tap
Benjamin Franklin Twitch wasn’t Alan Holman’s brother, but over those strange summer months that culminated in the burning of the Kissimmee Baptist Church, Alan came to think of him as such. Alan and his mom Sandra had just moved in with his grandma-his mom’s mom-in one of the three trailers [...]
Two Poems
If My Housemate Fucks With Me I Would Get So Real (Audition Tape Take 1)
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I didn’t come here to make friends.
Buildings spit their stomachs at me
and I spit back, down the sidewalk
into a bitch’s hair. I am a forehead
careening in clouds, a dirty tree branch
brushing against the [...]
Self-Portrait Absent Impulse Control
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In the television commercial
for high-tech wheelchairs,
the woman is basking
in her new-found freedom,
gazing improbably
down the Grand Canyon’s chasm.
I want to reach out with my finger
and push her over the rim.
If a tree falls in the forest,
it’s because I’ve chopped it down.
One strike of match
and the flaming meadow’s mine.
A [...]
Haiti, 1992
1.
Confined in a modest apartment,
My family listened to an answering machine
Play the part of my uncle
We heard:
“He’s dead, Bobby. Our father is dead.â€
This delicate news,
In my childish hands,
Felt natural and adventurous.
Being raised in the suburbs,
amongst the safety and sanity of planted palms
I remained hungry for tragedy.
2.
Inside our American home
When [...]
Three Poems
Hollywood Forever
Halloween came, sticky with the amniotic glow
of cheap candles and slapdash saints. We went
to the cemetery uncostumed so I could find
his naked face among the grinning skulls.
Each time he saw me, he bared his teeth.
On the cantilevered stage the fat lady shook
scared the ruffles of her tentacled dress.
When he [...]
Body Language
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There are moments when the body is as numinous
as words, days that are the good flesh continuing.
-Robert Hass, “Meditation at Lagunitasâ€
We are eating cheap pizza & drinking iced tea from styrofoam cups under fluorescent lights. I have told her only that I want to talk [...]
Tipping
Paige spilled milk onto her kitchen floor on purpose. She thinks, “I am doing this. The milk. My hands and my brain are allowing me to do this. This must be okay, if I can physically do this. My body was made for this,†as the milk goes from inside [...]
Two Poems
Here are some of the things I’ve learned since losing my virginity:
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My girlfriend shaves in so many places!
Holy cow! I’ve only ever shaved my face
with an electric razor, not a blade, because
I’m afraid of them. And I’ve never shaved
my balls, I would probably cut one off! For
cycling, [...]
Land of Afflictions
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For some, affliction is a badge. They have always worn it, affixed to lapel or strap. Their moans of pain could easily be mistaken for pleasure. Others make of themselves a house with different rooms. Here is my clawfoot tub, they say. Here is my bed. Here [...]