The old ****** slowly digs holes
plowing with precision
he places acorns

under peony bushes
behind the old
windmill,
each

day he wearily climbs
the den  tree
curling into
his nest

as the neighborhood
tomcat watches.

We stand on the sidewalk
cousin Jamie and me, with

a bible in my right hand,
I drape my left arm

around her lopsided
shoulders and cold brace;

she seldom smiles,
even as the shutter clicks.

You probably think this poem is about
Lisbon, Portugal, where women
dangle your imagination like
a necklace of sun-dried
currants. No,

Lisbon, Iowa, a town twenty-two
miles removed from the 21st
century, where I stopped
for coffee, flipped eggs
and a place to ****
on my way home

from  god what  a day;
a man ordered a plate
of Rice Krispie bars
and tea—shuffled

his wallet for ten minutes,
made me nervous
like he was on
Thorazine;

it was the last
time I visited
Lisbon.

Doctor split his chest free
cracked  it wide  open
like a blessed pit

Then  doc tickled Gabe’s
heart with a scalpel
made it clean

Again he can go skirt
chasing and set his
**** straight

So the process can
begin again with
the pain

His teeth feral teeth
and putrid breath

does not correlate
with the pale shoulders

and soft ways of
the woman with him;

somehow they make
the Multiflora

rose, rise
and blossom.

She is soap smooth from Achilles
to scalp’s apex

for years contemplated
suicide

instead, she learned
the right nutrients

creates life that bursts
above all

else.