The slam poet in cords, in denim,
rambles from neon beer haven
to flybuzz brothel, cracking quiet
jokes about soup to shiny junebugs
in the relentless moonlight.
One hundred dollars in thirty-five bills
slowly retreat from wallet
toward water-cut whiskey.
He’s got a chapbook widely
available at frozen yogurt shops
across the metro; he’s got a
tour in the works, tri-county,
every middle school from
Shawnee to Seminole; he’s
got a collection of ex-girlfriends,
made up almost entirely of wizened lesbians;
he’s got an MFA from UNC Wilmington,
and he shouts this more than speaks this
from his treacherous barstool to the sleepy bartender.
One of the girls, she takes him upstairs,
and to her he says, Your freckles—islands
in the sea of your milk-white skin.

The night passes, warehouses are razed,
and he watches the loft apartments emerge.
The food trucks come. He parks beside them,
typing poems made to order out of his trunk. The
money flows in, crumpled and sweaty and
in one-dollar denominations. The Old Fashions
transfigure into Old English. And in his pocket
thesaurus he looks for a word. It’s not vagrant,
nor vagabond. It’s not homeless, nor wayward.
He lies in the long shadow of a Midwestern sunset,
starved and shaking. Up from the blackened
city shrubs comes an indifferent breeze and
just as he thinks the word Pauper, he dies one
on the corner of 23rd and Western.

I've seen a sheriff put a bullet in a deer's head in Colorado Springs,
I've lived a winter through in an unfinished basement,
I've made obligatory love to a dark-haired woman,
her red dress above her head.

I've stumbled to the karaoke bar
just to read out of a notebook of unfinished poetry,
and when the crowd complained I said,
"These are the last words I will speak."

I've thrown my wallet into my grandmother's open casket,
I've got a punch card behind the counter at the liquor store,
I've ended a job interview by throwing a fake apple through
a glass window.

I've seen the battlefield of Antietam.

I've watched the rearview mirror for hours expecting
her husband to find me.

I've hidden a gun under my shirt, and I've
got this song in my head I've been meaning to write down.

I've got a good intention and a couple theories and a
Southern affection for personal secrets.

All of my friends were there
and their friends, too
and the friends of my friends'
cousins and their dogs
and their all-seeing aunts crammed into
ill-fitting blouses with
their husbands in New York or L.A.
and their inbetweens sending them
***** texts and someone, I think it was
my mother, she said, Why don't you
lay in the river
And I said, Of course
The leaves fell
The birds sang a four-note phrase
and all my friends, the best ones,
they tossed half-empty packs
of gum, flower petals, quarters, pens--
anything they had in their pockets
As I passed by them I said, Remember
when we ate the poison berries and
said our goodbyes. Remember when
I played pitcher on our t-ball team.
Remember when Drew took the electric
fence to his crotch. Remember when
we threw Josh's library book into the rain.
Remember when I learned to ride a bike in
sixth grade. Remember when I kissed
you on the backseat of the school bus.

And they said, Yes. And they laughed.

Those were good times.

My brother, he was there too, he hopped
in the river and gave me a push, said,
I'll see you around the next bend.

Life number two, I said.

Life number two.

I was sitting at the computer
trying to think of a way
to describe a woman's
*** as anything other
than a woman's ***
and there were
marlboro black
cigarettes on my
creaking desk
and I had a fifth
of whiskey on the
windowsill and
I rubbed my forehead
and thought of fruits--
apples and oranges--
no, no that's overdone
and I thought of animals--
elephants and horses--
but, again, no, I'd
come across as one of
those sick ******* that
go to the zoo in  
stained trench coats
and rub themselves against
the chain link
and Eve would walk in
beautiful girl with short
hair and a sharp mind
she'd ask what I was
writing about and
I'd say women
but the women were
never her, she pointed out
and I'd say I don't want to
jinx this, what we have,
you know? and she'd say okay,
okay

I'd get lit up every evening and
I'd text other women
I'd tell them about the shapes
of their ***** and the sizes
of their brains and they'd
usually say uh huh yeah
but I was fishing, always
fishing for that compliment
that sliver of hope, that
unsatisfied wife
when you're trying to be
Bukowski you'll throw
yourself under the bus
again
and
again
for what?
a story, trivial and base,
and that good woman,
that best woman, that Eve,
one day while making breakfast
she'll say to the eggs in the skillet
I can't take this **** anymore
and you'll say so don't
and she'll say fine
and she'll walk out the front door
wearing your t-shirt
you'll feel free for a week
and alone for two years.

Pink confused with white
flowers and flowers reversed
take and spill the shaded flame
darting it back
into the lamp’s horn

petals aslant darkened with mauve

red where in whorls
petal lays its glow upon petal
round flamegreen throats

petals radiant with transpiercing light
contending
              above
the leaves
reaching up their modest green
from the ***’s rim

and there, wholly dark, the ***
gay with rough moss.