Hot breath creaks inside my chest, groans
my slats with pearly condensation.
I am twenty – and I am warped,
with a body bent like shanty shingle, angled
mad enough to slide off sides and tumble into flower
beds of strangers.

My bones – once new, once green – grew
children ‘long a doorframe, climbing swirls of ivy
ink and wispy curls to lintel.
Wily little imps they were that tore their jeans
and shed their sleeves each fall, that slept in mud
and came inside if just to smudge
their mother’s ivory trinkets. Shelf dwellers
in a dusty sea, elephant and whale – bone
more bone than my own ever dared, or cared, to be.

Desperate
cry! The Sapiens
climb out of molded
couch cushions,
fake forms of
human clay flesh burnt
by kilns and flaming
flash fiction.

Electric!
Eel-slippery, fat
fingers plug socks on
hide arches,
Yellow  Ems ™
where stems meet ground and
grease the pure dirt with
perspiration.

Be, oh! BE!  –
please? Be ‘fore the tail
forks its tip against
fine china,
‘fore the lungs,
with their breath, blacken
all that’s left of Gran’s
good silver.

“Gold though!” – sweet
leaf tea that glides smooth
down dry throats and helps
soothe, herbal
chamomile
confection that calls
the tailor in for
noose and suit.

“Spades!” I say –
so we dress for death,
not life; we mold and
rot in ‘tumes.
Give me my
birthday garb, unstarched,
wrinkled on its frame –
dusty then,
I will be happy then.

a sedan in an alley can

hold one child, one adult
and two swallows
              two eyes, two eyeing
              and four hands

a sedan in an alley can

hold one taut, one loose
and two lessons
            two tests, two testing
            and four wrongs

a sedan in an alley can

hold one plus, one minus
and two much
           too soon, too dark
           and four doors

a sedan in an alley can

tell how it began, in
the backseat the answer
           is that there is none
           and zero is

NOT YET –
mad is the little girl, tongue to teeth
sliver drinking the draft
        of a pleasure clap in the dark
and dining wire bound
        on the stock of recession shelves.



SOMEHOW –
white winds the hell picket fence *****
sterile wrapping her house
on stilts termite vein unsteady
and hiding the beryl murk
of its smudge-empty panes.



NOT LET –
fail is the innocent, laurel hung
slack dangling on the vine
from a hickory gibbet down grown
and twitching in the zephyrs
of prayer stammer and stench.

Wet enough,
a paper cup
will wilt in
petal folds to
flower.

The effect of you was that
I could not say three words
or breathe enough. At
once, I was two-thirds
of you and you of me.
Our closeness let lust flow
a madness through, gently
red as running veins (though
further it felt like fire). So this
I was, skin on fat on dust
of bone – as life consists
of being only almost just
from you, the effect of
leaving was all of the above.

If this poem can be
called stream of
consciousness, then this
awkward pause…
is not ellipse but fish.

What you see is
a body melting,
puddled and red running
streams between the tile.
I am unbecoming,
and you are sloshing
in me like child, rain
boot shine and splash.