I search for the best lay of the land
between hillsides & beyond
concrete

where gravel roads wander
toward birdsong and gut
laughter with

few  fence posts
and sleep filled
nights.

Near blind
no longer able

to follow the path
under the bridge

to stream’s edge where
White-tailed deer bow

and drink
pink tongues flick,

eyes
wide.

There are  fingerprints burned
into these kilns, leather hands
once held  waists of women
with wide hips who gave
birth to children

with gaunt  faces;  now, the bricks
lay across America’s streets
forgotten.

Food for thought, the school
is torn down, McDonald’s
took its

place, and the old man
living in the corner
house

masturbated on his  front
porch until the police
stopped him

is decades dead, I don’t
remember his name

but the poor as horse meat
children who attended
class with me

I see like clean
glass.

Beth figured she’d marry a man with a full tool box
capable of building a house anvil strong,
                              
a man who’d plug her good and help raise
children with squares jaws,

he’d  praise her Christmas fruitcake,
provide every American good thing;

she added
wrong.

There are plenty of diseases around, take
an American motel room, shine an
ultraviolet on wall switches,
pillows, see seminal fluid
& mucus splotched like
a Jackson *******,
these are seen,

now,  flick a light & open your eyes
& recognize the overt sickness of
racism, spread  like jam
across American
bread, widely
viewed,
unseen.

You tied  shoelaces together
and tried to hang yourself
from McMillin’s
basketball
hoop.

The neighbors talked about
it for years over flapjacks
and grits.  

They couldn’t understand why
anyone would attempt
suicide. I knew
the reason;

you were homely
and dull, kind of
foul smelling

too.  You failed
at  death, me
at life.

One day while ******* beer from the curb into the street
you were hit by a Toyota. Split your forehead like
a cleaved melon.  You are officially a gimp;
your left eyeball wanders & you live in
June of 1986 & talk to the radio.
Hope this is read to you,
your friends wept
years back.

Leaves mound like
wheat  in silos,

I’ve trees that need pruning,
weeds in the fence line

beg to be yanked, a coyote
caroused in the chicken

coop and slats should
be nailed over

the void; seventy degrees
is predicted today

and no work will
be done.

She is searching for good eggplants,
me, a bundle of  decent radishes
and an avocado.

She’s been eating licorice
or chocolate; her lips
are ringed dark.

I smile at the contrast between
her pale skin and licorice or
chocolate, she looks up,

bemused; similar to the way
you would respond if seeing
a calico in a fall pear tree.

We look at one another
for two seconds or so;
I figure me no good,

and leave.

"From Voice Of A ******* Dog"

You watch at a distance from the safety
of  your green and  white lawn chair
as I lick  my *******. You probably
do not think I know my colors;
an incorrect assumption.

Green is for the Irish, communists
prefer red,  blue is the sky on good
days  and you are, as most
men, yellow. I am not on
that spectrum.

If things worked out I might have
stood on an Olympic podium
holding a gold medal or

awarded a ten thousand dollar
check and a mahogany framed
certificate for winning

a Pulitzer Prize; instead, on good
days I run down alleys looking
for **** spots and comb

streets for drunks and lame
people who make for
interesting pictures.

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.

The wet smoldering scent
of burning dogwood
leaves

reminds me of the hours
spent in the garden
kissing

the soiled palms of
a woman tousled
from work.

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.

Why do they die?
The healthy ones against
wind rain, snow and disease.
It died. Fell over with a groan.
It was just a red oak; I loved it.

There are days I know I am alive
only because I feel the weight on my
feet as I rise to have a new day accept me.
It  is when I read  poems of Louise Gluck or
Sharon Olds that I realize I am merely one half

living.

Two  and one half flights up a home built
in 1899, and eight steps on a pull down
staircase,  enter an attic, upon the pine
floor are carved the words,
I hate mommy.

The possibility exists that on November 8th
a circus clown may become Ringmaster
of the World and that will be a *****
trick played on humanity by God.

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

There are thirty of us under a torn canopy
where the sound of wind blowing against canvas
assaults me as if I were being beaten. We will
soon ride into the hills and **** pine; to fell
the mighty as if the mighty are horseweeds.
Every callused man here  hates his weapon;
worn chainsaws that would make  better
tools to fight  wolves than walk the earth
clearing  stands of timber.
**************
Twelve of the original thirty loggers come back
for our 48th consecutive day; it rains as if  prehistoric
elk hover over the camp and **** a lake upon us.  Six men
go home within an hour because farming and stocking
cans of tuna at grocery stores appear more plausible than
wallowing in mire with saws, wedges, and chains with links
the size of your mother’s fist.  It is work and *******
every man  needs to eat or help feed a family.  The money
is not good, conditions like Czechoslovakia WW II.  

The six of us who remain, leave.

You have a cute southern drawl
she said.

You are not brilliant but I like your ***
was the best  I could offer.

You from Mississippi?
No, southern Iowa.

Not much difference in men
all weighed and measured;

this, we both
understood.

The broken limb missed my uncle’s rose trellis
landed not far from his turquoise bungalow

two feet from a Plymouth Valiant
flush atop his domestic

rabbit cage.  Four rabbits
crushed, another

greasy-eyed,  still
alive—uncle popped

its head against a bur
oak, the sixth

limped out in
concentric circles

far away, never
looked back.

I like poems that smell of milk
that is about to curdle. Not with
enough bacteria to **** you, but
enough to make you wince
and heave. Spoiled
sufficiency you

want to apologize to God
or at least explain every
despicable thing you
knew of and did not

stop.

Nothing remains,
not  one  rhizome,
stem, or hairy root

travels, shoots, or buries
itself during barren  fall;
only  impending winter

resides in my garden
this unpredictable season,
and it is waiting for spring.

They gather under
the steeple, beneath
spire and holy cross,

when I run past on
Sunday mornings
especially when

it's sunny with
leaves budding
I think of lifting

the preacher's wife's
dress to her waist,
her eyes glued

to the sky.

So not to surface after a torrent aunt Lorrell  was buried nine feet
deep on a hillside in a rural cemetery next to relatives with headstones
of Pauline, Bebbe, Margaux,  and Bror—common French and Swedish names.

Our bodies are temporary blossoms; family history says
Lorrell had four *******, Bebbe a glass eye,
and Margaux webbed toes.

I await.

Dark against a glacier-blue sky;
a flying Crucifix silent as a stone.

Remember the afternoon we watched
the police drag the lake searching
for the Williams boy as we drank
Dr. Pepper?

There was a hell of a crowd
you had both hands on
Shelly’s *** & she
****** down her

thighs when the kid
bobbed up, face
pale blue, eyes
wide.

They ask have we turned
the corner away from
hell toward sun
& lofty ideals?

I am no judge
open your
rosebud
eyes &
see.

I don’t want to be present
when any child figures out

that much of our world
has descended into

dead toads atop a white pillow
where those children must lay their heads

to sleep at night for
the next eight decades.

See, I am  looking
for the best lay
of the land,

between two hillsides
beyond concrete, asphalt,
where

there are only
red dirt roads
few tire tracks,

a place of birdsong
gut laughter,

hard work.

Woman ****** fuzz does not puzzle me,
but stumps  men near and far.

They claim hair is best on Bonobos;
I view that a lesser stance.

For the fourth time
since July 29

I watered your
Heinz 57

neglect again
count on being chained.

She loved **** early & too often
was her uncle Mike showed
her how doggies do it &

she taught me how
to howl into
the sky

loud enough
to startle
crows

cause them to shiver
from the oaks &

I loved that girl
who left town

a blue Chevy
it was, so
long

ago.

We sit three stools away and can not talk
bold enough to understand
one another.

She moves to the seat next to me and asks
if my bacon is crisp.  I say more
or less—want a bite?

There is a tattoo of a cross on her forehead.
My cousin Beryl done that to me when
I was 12, horsin’ around, he was 19
and no good.

She goes to *** or powder her tattoo; I pay
my bill and walk outside under a sky
so blue I want to cry.

Be wary of men who say your eyes are those of
morning poppy blossoms because they only
want to eat pizza with you, take you to bed,
have you diaper their babies, scour the sink,
paint the bathroom, wash their socks
                               and
when they are old and brains knitted
with dementia, you will walk them
to the toilet and lead them
to ****. This is mostly
truth.

Somewhere buried deep beneath your family albums,
Mother’s Day cards, embroidered pillow cases,
Canadian coins and high school yearbooks
there is a  hidden picture of you and  me
under the  limbs of a flowering Catalpa
tree.  It only sees light on uncommon
days when you are alone.

At any angle butchered pigs
are grotesque blossoms.

Not true of workers who slit their throats
and hang them upside down to bleed.

They catch fireflies, husk walnuts,
have fingers that strum guitars

and savor cold  tangerines; those who ****
pigs are beautiful.

Let me unfold you
         completely.

White cotton sheet
         beneath the p.m. sun
         draped on a line
         long and free
         flowing.

Sun downs
         encased in an ink sky
         black to our vision
         it will again rise
         tomorrow.

Unfold you again,
         completely.

I’ve born four children, one still dead
another taken by 11th-week aspiration,
proves I'm randy enough for most.

Salt of the earth rural and *****,
looking for time with a man
who’s skinny or capable.

I’ve impatient hips; show me
which one you claim.

Sometimes when you’re at a cafe
you wonder if the person sitting
next to you would be a better
lover than you’re accustomed
and then you think the person
might give you a gift of a shirt
or advice that could renew you
or provide much insight into
your bumbling life. That’s
when pragmatism takes you
a step backward and away
from the  polished counter
and out the door to ponder
that the person sort of looks
like a long lost relative.

She said I need
to pull your
pants off,

lay still or you'll be sorry,
remember last
time?

Maybe I was
three or four
when I ******

the bed;
the next day
mother was gone,

forever.

Great grandfather, I'm so sorry you
drank boric acid in 1914 and killed
yourself, it must have been a long
and miserable way to say to hell
with life.  A confusing legacy
left to your succeeding kin
who thought maybe your
heart went boop, or
a streetcar called
No Desire wrote
your final
history.