He eyes me like he's hungry for a steak,
Like I'm something on a plate.
His voice is sweet and low but fake.
I questions his intentions,
Wonder why there's salt on the table...
Yeah, warm me up.
Thaw me out and maybe I won't taste so much like cardboard.

////////////////
He told me he knows how to love a person,
I told him what he knows is how to eat a good meal.

you will be able to say
once in a while
during the brief
jaunts in our underwear
the glimpses of green lace
under a white cotton shirt
that moved across my shoulders
on the hardwood floors, our heels
stomp and slide, and my thighs
quiver under weight and laughter
you caught me and I turned
turn to hold your neck


but I pause to bring you close
to hold you, as if you were
a vase of baby's breath and ferns
to look you over and wonder how
one moment I was sitting here writing
this on the couch on a september evening
and how you are here now,
with a strange familiarity
and the watch on your wrist
softly clicks forward
but I can hear it from
inside the glass, atop the second hand
sweeping over the ticked surface
reflecting the sweet blue daylight,
the warmth of your body and
the gentle harmony of two people
who have found eachother.

I sat watching 3 girls,
couldn’t be any older than 12,
wearing shorts cut by
expectations and
            taking pictures
with coffee cups and
wearing make up
stronger          than
perfume clouds
following like
hitchhikers
and
a slow car.
**** magazines          and enraptured
by the           irrelevant famous,
exposing the youth’s lack
of interest in literature,
callow   and murderous,
glasses filled and cocksure,
the world in front of them
and yet they’re taking
steps backwards

MJB

it's abut 9pm and I decide I don't want to be alone



there was a car crash earlier that day up west towards Salida--
some Kansas man who was killed by a driver trying to pass
in the right lane, declared deceased on scene, another man
from Monument who was air-lifted to St. Thomas Moore,
no critical injuries.

I tend to ask God for these big signs, signs that I'll recognize. I tell him
that they need to be something I'll notice because you know me, sometimes I can't hear you. Anyway, signs, crashes. A Kansas man died.  It's 9pm and I pull on some jeans and leave the house.

I'm supposed to be at a rodeo dancing, but maybe I wasn't supposed to be there after all. I have this white dress in my closet that you can't even see, tucked between everything else because it's so thin, lays flat beneath the aztec smocks and cream cardigans. I take it out and brush it off, thread my fingers through the open lace--

10pm. When I breathe soft enough the stars look like they're hanging on strings, like I could reach up and snap them off,
they'd be no bigger than dew drops on a spider web
so light they'd drift up in the night breeze and
set up in my own natural atmosphere.

What good would it have done me to be there? I only ask
myself to assuage the warm fear i've been feeling since Friday
night, a lingering umbrage I did not think would stay--
I can see the white stitches in my jeans that look
like they're glowing,
smells like rain out here.
I wish I was out at Chaffey
for a quick moment, enveloping
someone else in this chanel perfume
makin' someone else envious of the
way another man got to spin me out--

I'm trying to be all these people at once, an  
audience of crowd pleasers piled into one body
It's so quiet, I'm so quiet up on the sideways knoll in
Florence, tired of letting people down easy off the sidewalk
curb and being tossed off the bridge over the state highway myself,
I can't help it, I want to say aloud.

I can't help that I am this way, collected.
calm in hearty hysterics, anxious to tell
you about how I've been fixed,
that warm fear growin' hotter
a coal for every man who suggested
I be less than who I am by pourin' more
into my cup,

I'm trying. I'm trying.

where do you think he is right now?
somewhere across the sky
writing love letters to a girl
who doesn't have a tint of green in her eyes
(he always said that was my most beautiful feature)
where do you think he is right now?
somewhere between the seas
sketching her undressed body
one free of bruised thighs
(he loved the purple against the white of my skin)
where do you think he is right now?
somewhere where the clouds run wild
watching the sunset, holding her hand
her nails aren't short and manicured
(he loved how mine were always neat)
where do you think he is?
somewhere where the memory of me floats
lying next to a girl with a birthmark on her neck
*(but he was still in love with the girl with a birthmark next to her mouth)

the boys will pick up sticks
down by the river bank and bury
themselves in swampy soil and inch
thick ***** mags from before they were
twinkles or considerations and their fathers
ignore their quick wits and charms--let their
curiousity coil around the garden stakes till
it chokes the tomatoes and lays itself across the
blushing rhubarb that mama worked so hard to
cultivate.

Papas, why didn't you chop down those trees or
tame the stinging nettle, the roof is riddled with
bullet holes and the rifle in the attic is still warm
still vibrating on the shelf, buried in moss, in
wisteria dropping in and growing up the sides--
she can make a man more beautiful but still hide a broken a home

you had a chance to guide your sons

you had a chance.

Travis stands outside the grounds
with me and listens while I recount
the past two months, several times he
sighs and knocks his ball cap up, takes
a rough palm and wipes it down his face,
holding his jaw briefly,

he's smaller in frame, my height, makes eye contact
and holds it, takes you in when he speaks. He's been
treated pretty rough from what i hear but still keeps the
back porch open for visitors and I guess I am one--
twisting the cap on and off a tube of lip gloss, we
talk quietly about his brother who is in and out of
the swinging doors, there are so many men with
blue plaid shirts in here and I can hardly keep track--

and when we head for the Dome, I maneuver through the
old carousers and dark drunks who lurk in plain view, men who
murmur of course, hermosa when I gingerly place my hands
on their shoulders and inch past the doorway, I am searching for
you, for your blue sleeve,
but instead find Travis' and we dance a slow song--

I think he understands how I'm feeling, might be the lack of a poker face, we two-step and I trip over his boots, and when we're done he
kisses my shoulder lightly.

If I wasn't so affected by the warmheartedness I'd tell you I'd barely
noticed, but I am, when people are good, they are much softer. Their
intentions are palpable and tender--
and maybe I find comfort in touching people which i don't do too
often--and for a moment that was all i needed was a hint of
kindness after being handed off
from man to man, from feeling
intensely right with your arms
looped around my waist
with my fingers loosely settled
in your palm--to stranded with a memory
too many times where
you walked off and
i still had so much
more to say, like,
I truly love you,
maybe.