navigator’s balcony cocktail hour
rocket orbit ocean liner rising
clenched no teeth no guernica no bam bam bam
correspondent notary republic
address book dial figure 8
charred with a thousand jigsaw pieces
false as a beach chiaroscuro black
on black graveyard womb naked milk glass lit
footprint tourism by candlelight and flare
vaccination fatigue puke fingernail fish
moving a bandaged echo **** him **** her
familiar bell music **** them both **** them all
stretched shirtsleeves spanish toffee slashed tires
(failure as a painter he shaved his wife’s fur coat)
bust your ***** Barcelona red alert
knock-kneed broken squeezebox no hands
standing room only ladies first (please)
unbuttoned interrogation coffee rolls (stop)
marine’s vegetation (stop) early morning tea (stop)
armless menus (stop) pink cathedral fingers (stop)

and (begin again) move

we move

moving inside an eye this eye
that advances step
by step

Let us go, Oedipus, let me walk you
'Twixt towers reaching to heaven,
Where women are charged to be patient and perfect.
You will not stay upon your leash.

We walk through Mandalay, not Paris,
Where the women have no face.
'Tis but a siren of emergency
That sings to me.

What worth I am to you, Oedipus,
What worth am I to them?
When the footman holds my coat, and snickers,
What worth am I to them?

Every man is a piece of the continent!
She may love me for the dangers I have passed,
And I her that she did pity them,
But she cannot, now and forever.

And while the sun excludes me,
I am not them and they not I,
And the waters do not glisten,
She is their chattel and not mine.

I gaze upon her ornate face and sing,
Her eyes are pools of wonder that see me, and swing away.

I am older, I have sense,
Like Oedipus my King,
But when I see her ornate face
I very nearly sing.

After many lonely nights
In shirtsleeves and not silk,
I went to her, and said:
Here, take this silver, for my milk.

And she may have loved me once
But for my thought and sense,
I'm but a bumblebee today -
I left at some expense.

You know what?
I will fight
Because it's difficult
Because the lows are so ******* low
Because the night air chills my damp shirtsleeves
Because sometimes the walls are impenetrable
Because I do it the hard way
But really because
He always says it back

the kids
that you didn't know existed
all winter
have been jail-sprung
they litter the sidewalk
like snowdrops
riding miniature bikes
with training wheels
zipping up and down
the street
in their
shirtsleeves
the easter bunny
coaxed them out
into the park
to search for treats
but they decided to stay

This wild night, gathering the washing as if it were flowers
          animal vines twisting over the line and
          slapping my face lightly, soundless merriment
          in the gesticulations of shirtsleeves,
I recall out of my joy a night of misery

walking in the dark and the wind over broken earth,
          halfmade foundations and unfinished
          drainage trenches and the spaced-out
                    circles of glaring light
          marking streets that were to be
walking with you but so far from you,

and now alone in October's
first decision towards winter, so close to you--
          my arms full of playful rebellious linen, a freighter
          going down-river two blocks away, outward bound,
          the green wolf-eyes of the Harborside Terminal
                    glittering on the Jersey shore,
and a train somewhere under ground bringing you towards me
to our new living-place from which we can see

a river and its traffic (the Hudson and the
hidden river, who can say which it is we see, we see
something of both. Or who can say
the crippled broom-vendor yesterday, who passed
just as we needed a new broom, was not
one of the Hidden Ones?)
          Crates of fruit are unloading
          across the street on the cobbles,
          and a brazier flaring
          to warm the men and burn trash. He wished us
luck when we bought the broom. But not luck
brought us here. By design

clean air and cold wind polish
the river lights, by design
we are to live now in a new place.

i like that the freckles on your face match the ones on your back, and no two freckles are the same
like snowflakes
your kisses are soft and wet.
you said my full name is pretty, and i like how it sounds when you say it
i'd let you call me by it if you asked.
you drank all my wine but what you didn't know is that wine was already yours
you gave me head on the floor
in my bedroom, you pick the best songs to kiss to.
i like the way you say 'jasmines'
a quieter part of me wonders how you would go about pronouncing every flower, and how long it would take
i would stay till the end
i didn't expect to feel anything when you said i was just your friend
you laid your head in my lap, and my thighs grew feelings all around you
but you run your fingers through your tangleless hair, and all my feelings fall to the floor
i will tuck them into my shirtsleeves, wear them like a friendship bracelet
we're just friends till nightfall, by midnight i'm your favorite.
i am not a tender thing to you, and i won't tell you that i want to be
so long as you continue to say my name so softly

“I need to write a poem”
Were the first words out of my mouth when my mother told me about
The Letters

One letter arrived one day, postmarked July 1st, 2014
I don’t know when it arrived, but that day
I guess that day her soul earned it’s wings
That day, that one day
My soul crumbled as hers rose to the heavens, with that piece of paper
that had Apology scrawled all over it in that handwriting of hers that
Didn’t change one bit

I was watching my family extra closely as my mother read the letter out loud
I didn’t want to see any of us hurt anymore even though I knew in my heart
We would get through this
We’re Zelinskis, strong and forgiving
We open our hearts to perfect strangers and welcome them into our home with hugs and laughter and game nights that don’t end at midnight
We are one in suffering and one in rejoicing
We wear the teachings of the bible on our shirtsleeves and kindness drip drops from our eyes
My dad says
We’re all children of christ

But Children still get hurt
My sister, she chose Laughter
My brother, his face was a blank canvas as I rubbed and rubbed, trying to see through the white blanket of paint that masked his emotions
My sister in law told me the Truth
My brother, I don’t know, I just hope he listens to his heart this time
My sister, she has a wedding to plan
Me,
Maybe I’m the only one who wanted to be angry
Maybe I’m the only one who sees their pain even though they can’t
Or maybe I’m delusional and no one’s really affected by the Letter

We’re still children
I’m still bouncing around the house, following the older kids around like a lost puppy
My sisters are still my heroes and my brothers
Are still my knights, my Protectors, the ones I could sass and make fun of because they
Did the same to me but with much more force than my small voice could carry
We’re still children
I know nothing of The Letters
Instead, I’m welcoming Her into our home again with a tray full of Grandma’s famous chocolate chip cookies and the goofy grin of a six year old
I’m meeting Her eyes again
Only this time
I know she’ll leave
This time, I know how much time I have

So I’ll write my letter now
And instead of remorse and anger
I’ll fill it with good times and Remember Whens
I’ll put it in the mailbox, swipe the red flag up
And wish on the mailman that you’ll get it

If my sins returned as monsters
   if each lie awoke a ghoul
   there would be no hiding place
   nor shelter for my soul.

For my wrongs are many
   and forgiveness has been spent
   what with all the ills I've wrought
   'twould be inane to try repent.

The careless sounds slipped from my tripping lips
   the thoughtless flapping of my tongue
   those simple phrases cost me dearly
   on my shirtsleeves they've been hung.

Looking back at past events
   I find it quite absurd
   that God dost grant us no device
   to unspeak a wicked word.

Smoking is a working class disease
They said; he smiled at this.
Lean in body and broad of mind
With shirtsleeves rolled,
A modern man's philosopher
Who stuttered over the words
Like his fingers did over her chassis
Detroit rolling iron beneath his palms
Grease and lubricant under the nails.
The cigarette cherry glows in the dark
Giving him a hard edge aura  
The gloaming settling into the lines
Of his work-worn face

No two people
ever conceived by God
could possibly be more alike than us

We live our lives in perpetual hope
of Country Time Lemonade commercials
and old reruns of “Leave it to ******”

We hope that, around the next bend
on a dusty, sun streaked road
we will find our Mayberry

That place where old men
weighing down sagging porches
speak in parable of better times

That place where young mothers
perpetually in their Sunday best
push strollers edged in brick-a-brack

That place where little boys
have impossibly grass stained knees
at the edge of muddy fishing holes

That place where little girls
pick Black-Eyed Susan's in verdant fields
and play at getting married while the little boys flee in terror

That place where dapper fathers
mow lawns in their shirtsleeves
and tip their pipes to one another in the falling afternoon sun

Together, we dream of this place;
this ideal;
this America.

Together we dream and, together, we continue
down that old dirt road;
hoping to find Mayberry
just around the next bend.

Shiver. Beetles under my skin
wear top hats in my fever dreams.
They dance on pinprick goosebumps in
the pale fabric of my shirtsleeves.
Crawling. Aching. Never let it stop.
I need it more than it needs me.
Lock up my addiction; Throw away the key.
Gasping. ******. Never let it stop.
One more drag.
One more drop.
Lock up my addiction; Set me free.

I chanced upon an old letter
That had clearly sailed legless on seas
Crumpled, damp but inside the envelope:

Intelligible writing by sight
But by comprehension I was lost
Disorientated and sea-sick.

Sometimes you come across
an object, and in no way
can you explain its origin,
it’s purpose, or the frame of
mind of the person who last
encountered it,

The letter was dry and slightly
smudged but the envelope (and stamp)
could not be made out at all

I could not send it back
If I could I would be lost for
words, as it seems they were in ways:


...and I have little leaves, I love you and I miss you so much.
When he finished the day in the ocean waiting for you to choose from Aserahosov read our son and apricot. My shirtsleeves damp in your memory. Our subject is expected later to the rest of the flight path of the earth ready to kiss a little faster on the planet.
I broke a strong bird while I like the cakes, I break the strong current. Love my *** I strongly flow. It has been Pecan pie is to say...

My understanding of romance is minimal
But to have leaves seems morbid
Even more so than the breaking of
the bird...
Why should a bird get hurt in this
gross courtship?
and a strong one too,
what act of love can break
anything but a heart?

I like the cakes, I break the strong currents

Perhaps the words of someone rushing
Across oceans in the name of love
Slicing through the chunky waves
But the cake is a bit out of place
Surely no one would rush across oceans
Wide and rough and restless
For a cake that was simply ‘liked’
This must all be a prank...

This one then—

Love my *** off I strongly flow…

Now, I hope the flowing is another
Nautical reference, it would tie in nicely
With the breaking of currents-
I cannot comment on what precedes it
There is much I cannot discuss
In this disgusting letter, I wish
I had not been given it.
****.




*—If I were a seahorse, I know that just being a seahorse would be enough...

i’m of that particularly pretentious belief that each and every one of us is larger than the biological self

our connections can reach far beyond far beyond the movement of our mouths into something metaphyiscal.

the crazy biology teacher at my old high school knew this and she sent herself into a panic over my brother’s white aura.

and in this roy-gee-biv of being, gold means good. blue means beautiful.  red means you’re hot and dangerous but i’m gonna touch you anyway.  green means get the **** away from me you freak.  

i can tell you with celestial certainty that my aura is spiders.

spiders.  spider moms and spider dads making millions of spider babies on my soul.  spiders crawling all over my face and out of my mouth.  spiders crawling out of my shirtsleeves.  spiders in my hair.  

i invite you to bathe in the light of my spiders.

i make people uncomfortable. i frighten small children.  i make grown men run away in terror.  i have high corners so i’m prone to webs.  i bask in the warmth of damp basements and nauseated screams.  

while my brother is busy being a pure soul.  while red seems out of reach.  while all the colors mix together in fantastic combinations unavailable in any box of crayons, i’ll be watching you all.  silently with my spiders.  judging.

Every couple days I see him
Standing, never sitting
Head bent, leaning with the car
The other people are constellations
But he is this one lone star

He never looks up or right
Just down with crinkled frown
He doesn't know just how bright
His light shines through this brown

This brown, this palpable ****
It covers us all
The fat, the lazy, the fit
It clings to our shirtsleeves
Pulls at our cuffs
Slowly burning our tree leaves
In slow deliberate puffs

But here he is
Every other day
Devoid of this **** and stank
Simply moving with the sway

I sometimes think of getting up
Of telling him how I feel
Mister you are beautiful
A wine glass where I am a cup
A plastic one with lines to tell
How much is too much
From *****, wine, even 7up

Though I never will

Sir it's not just that you are beautiful
It's because you never sit
You just stand and sway
Flexing your mighty wrist
You never stumble at the stops
Your ******* headphones
I doubt they twist

I know what I'm doing
Or at least what my mother would say
I've turned you into an ideal
A bet that will never pay
You'll be mean, jealous or loud
Sorry or far too proud

But how can you still shine like this
Each and every other day
An orbiting star standing three feet away
In this ***** **** covered subway

Giggles from the child as water
runs down her back, matching
the swinging wind chimes just outside
the wide-open window. Her mother
smiles, her shirtsleeves rolled up and
yet wet and covered in tiny bubbles.
The white tile around them glistens
in the sunlight pouring in, and I,
the grinning dad who just got home,
stand in the doorway, softened clay.
My wife, my beautiful wife,
looks up at me and says “Hey honey,”
and runs another small jug of bathwater
over my baby’s soft head of hair.
The little one trickles out “Hi Daaaaddy,”
and giggles again, as her mother scrubs
her little back and shoulders. Seeing this
scene in front of me, my eyes water
slightly. I pull it back in; after all
these years it’s still difficult for me to
simply be joyous. Nonetheless, there is
an ache in my heart, the ache one feels
when they first fall in love, and I am standing
here falling all over again. I roll up my sleeves
and drop to my knees, and give my wife
and my sweetie the biggest pecks I can muster,
and clean her delicate little arms. The mother
pours another jug, and once again, this little
darling angel, like wind chimes swinging outside,
giggles.

Seeking the sunrise,
Hiding in shadows,
Compressing the moonlight
Into your pocket

Because who knows when we'll see it again?
Pictures
Of what may never come back.
What we loved,
Lost,
Hated.
They last a lifetime

Like my tears
on your shirtsleeves.

Oh those bodies
on the museum walls
Tennessee Valley bodies and Los Alamos bodies
shining blackly like the stripe of a credit card.

The price of bread fixed at five cents
and we all eat it in slices.
Your name is your labour and
your labour your name.

I have disappeared into a country that doesn’t know me
and I am tearing it up with my teeth.

Oh those bodies
that were once slaves.
Were they pictured any other way
but in idyll or whipped dry?
The dusty Union regiments at Baton Rouge
have made a postcard of one scourged back;
they share it around and die for it.

I have a few postcards, too.
It is strange to see any man kneeling.

Oh those bodies
Cornbread bodies and bodies like a corn snake
crushed among the broad leaves of tobacco;
The ones in bone corsets and the ones
in reed baskets, floating downstream.
The ones in rosy marble and wrought bronze
the ones whose striped backs are coming out in wings
feathers pink and wet
like a new-hatched chick or a stillbirth.

Your body
is a tight machine of grief
packed into homespun like a fist
and relaxes in sepia as it never did in life,
a babe slung underarm and the food
only from cans; they keep the dust out.
Oh those bodies that tend the home, larder and ledger,
and reach for the high cabinets
and keep reaching.

The old voices are back at work.
I am not the one they are speaking to
but I hear them all the same.
They spread out a catalogue of wares
on a sisal blanket in the dark
and every price sounds fair, every garment lovely
unless you made it.

The country workman in bronze now and forever
with his rolled shirtsleeves; his body
raises a hammer and his bicep, mid-shiver
is always striking something, always building
Heaven, and Manhattan, from the foundations.
Stained glass his union flag
and Union Army blood he forgot or never knew.
The thin white arms of Andersonville,
meeting two generations hence, in his arms,
the dark scarred shoulders of the South.

Who brought forth upon the continent this new nation,
and who brought forth the ironclad Monitor
and who put into song the Maple Leaf Rag or Swanee River
and who put that soil there from which the cotton still grows
and who made your dress?
Who owes the debt and who records it?

You and I.

Oh those bodies swathed in light.
Oh those bodies becoming angels.
Bodies bound blackly
and bodies forgetting
which is what bodies do with injury:
they absorb, and they forget.

Is it okay
if sometimes
I can't tell the difference between
you and me
the places that separated us
have gone and disappeared
and now when you're gone
I am too
and I can't take anymore of this
I hear drums in the background
and it must be a sonata
waiting for me to conduct it
a pulsing rhythm
In and out
like the swell of a crowd
with the sweat intermingling
and I can't tell
who you are
you're just a circle
nothing but a circle
something fluid like the water
dripping from my shirtsleeves
in the dark
in the dark with no blue moon anymore
you took my blue moon
when you left
and you can stay away
because I can't handle this
I just can't
I can't live
with this solitude
So someone come along
and free me
from the mental

An enclave of vast differentness
From almost everywhere.
A place where
The mainstream has diverted
And left a backwater
Of rebel flags on pickup trucks and
Department stores that
Don’t sell any ladies dresses.
A place where t-shirts loudly shout
“It’s my right to make you sick -
The Constitution says so.”
A place where thinking’s so alike
It could be called homogenized.
Where rumors suddenly become facts
And checking them anathema .
Where tennis shoes are worn to church
And cargo shorts to weddings.
A place bathed in self righteousness
With tolerance a myth.
A place that’s situated
On a small but mighty river
That ebbs and flows
From day to day at the whim
Of men in shirtsleeves
Who control the dam,
And leave their trucks parked just outside
With the flags still proudly flying.
                   ljm

I looked for you under November snow.
You turned colors like the autumn leaves.
You rolled me up like your shirtsleeves.

Where did you run?
You beat down on me as the August sun.
You burnt me with your amber rays.
Disappeared like a needle in the hay.

Where did you fly?
I saw you in the red-hot sky.
You turned windy as a hurricane.
Spun me around like a weathervane.

Where are you now?
Over the moon with the cow?
Or dishing with the spoon?
While I stand here like a prune!

you. Writers.
Bearers of your Soul.

It makes you whole,
doesnt it?

Feelings on shirtsleeves
the transcendence of a Mole.

remake me as a fish,
this time,
let the knife calluses on
your fingers catch on the edges
of my iridescent scales as you
tenderly place them,
one by one

peel back my eyelids
to gently place shiny
river stones, polished smooth,
into empty eye sockets

and i do not fear the
knife with the curved end,
this time, as you open the
tender skin along my neck
on either side into fluttering gills

dunk your arms into the water
until it kisses the ends of your
worn shirtsleeves, and let me
loose to swim among the lily
pads, burrow into silty lake bed

and i’ll wait for you there,
letting the gentle lapping of the
lake against the rocky shore
lull me into sweeter dreams

maybe you’ll shed that second skin,
one of these days,
remake yourself in your own image,
just this once

and though the hook tugs,
buried in the meat of my inner cheek,
i know this is also a gift

and i won’t come out of the
water in a hail of droplets and
red, red, blood, thrashing and
choking on the fresh air

nay, this wild thing that lurks
behind my breastbone has been
worn away to make room for
how the sun looks arcing out across
the waters, how the knife calluses
on your fingers feel on my scales,
and how gentle you are with every part
of me, even those that still catch sometimes,
as you remove the hook from the
meat of my inner cheek and watch as
i slip back beneath the waves