Wireshell trash can sweep-brushed
by Fusion, Alero, Chrysler Something.
They’re filled to the brim like sepia-stained
skyscrapers with swivel chairs and water cooler
pow-wows. Boss’ talking fax machines
and projections for the second fiscal quarter,
flipping a stock EKG reading on its ***. We’re
all millionaires. All up like the NYSE at seven o’clock
in our living rooms watching the fireplace
playfully threaten our investments while CNN
sends money through the VCR slot. Cars, no
garbage trucks, cars, cars, scraping hubcaps off
the high sidewalks like beautiful harpsichords.
Neighbors. Suitcases and dresser drawers
packed tight with meat tape, paper towels,
and coffee mugs/fine China make heaped trash bags
seem obsolete. There’s no garbage here.
Downtown’s neon district makes enough
that they could afford a glowsign on every window,
every square inch of every lunch special, gallery opening,
or Salvation Army bell-ringer.

Forget New York,
we're the city that never sleeps.

Pure cane sugartar that sits on teeth,
sits on a canine porch swing
and swings too far, kicking the enamel
siding, wood knots, and greying-thin
windows. More exposed than Brad
Pitt's marriage or JonBenét Ramsay
on the cover of Old World News Daily
in the dentist's office. And there we
are. We're bleached white and burning
beneath paparazzi bulbs and a
a ****** case. Brief case money/
two thousand fourteen and it's still
relevant, still useful blood money.
Novocain lightning flash; burn a tree.
Cali home tucked behind parsley
palms. Fortune teller, baby, O.J. didn't
do it. Not The Juice, not him.
The gloves. The gloves. The gloves.
Comfort of picket fence rainbrushed
paint stripping. Raymour retail
of a mocha-cushion couch half-off
'cause the back's spattered with
toothpaste and taxpayer juice
like Grandma's cancer handbag.
Put your feet up, stay a while.
Don't leave.

The esophageal chill of fresh rain paired
with Bozek's tire stove undertones
slipped through the chain link tennis court.
Love all, love-fifteen, love-thirty, love-forty, game.
I love you, service box Suns, fault one fault lines,
Grandma's crochet centerpiece. Cornucopia coping
with deuce, add.  in, deuce, add. out, deuce,
you get it. Lost ***** in the transformer pen beside
the playground where I watched my classmates
fall off the monkey bars and expose themselves daily.
Racket strings like pantyhose girls surrounding
the sink applying lipstick and stabbing each other dead.
They don't need monkey bars to show off.
Slice serve pizza at Pudgies to kids barely making it.
Grades lower than the pepperoni from the seedy
gas station they sit in and thumb-spike quarters
into each other's knuckles. The "grown-ups"
buy instant lottery and feverishly **** the tickets
with misplaced pennies, and then toss the moneywastes
when they score a free ticket. Free ticket to what?
The tennis match in Addison so far away?
A clear view through chain link?
A wet, elm bench some kid made in shop class?
An alternative to what we waste our lives on?
******, marijuana, drinking at the basketball court, and
flicking cigarette filters into Berger Lake like we're hot ****.
We are ****, not the ****.
Just ****.

Funny, isn't it?
That a woman no more than a knee-high coffee table and a few copies
of National Geographic away from me
is holding a cell phone in one hand
and an apple in the other.
One will eventually **** her,
and the other will make sure a doctor
isn't around when it happens.

A while back, Nick and I sat
side by side
in split-back forest lawn chairs.
Huff and huff
the porch's coat of scarlet stain,
talking like
existential cab drivers.
Legs on legs
crossed like war trenches or
window blinds
or a cold zipper's cold teeth.
Life or death.
More life on rye, Swiss cheese.
Holey talk of Jesus Christ.
Cross the cross
and hope to die; I know we will.
For now, though,
skip small to get to big talk.
Cursive hand
separates notes and throws out
the *******,
but everything at that age was *******.
Challenger
never blew up, Dillinger
never robbed,
we never dissected life
to see its
uncertain pancreas.
We're kids but can't act like it.
Qualms with calm,
and clever wordplay plays footsies
with my thoughts.
My stale bread secrets take up
too much space.

adrenaline and alcohol coursing through my veins,
eyes lowered, breathing slowed,
staring at the stage.
fueled by self confidence, or lack thereof,
hands shaking, knees are weak,
tonight I'm in love.
you're here with her but I can't fight it,
lonely girl, attention *****,
habit I can't quit.
kissing her with your hands on me,
bodies sweaty, subtle touching,
risking that she'll see.

You are all the light
I have ever seen
And the poem
I have never
Been able to write.

I wish you’d kiss away my tears
Wish you’d open my lips
The way you have
Every intricate part of me
And steal your name
Right off my lips
Right out of my mouth
Until all thats left of me
Is this drunken desire
To drink to forget
Your
Name

Slumped shoulders, a spine wire hanger
holding a jacket up. Taut sleeves, out-
turned pockets, warped collar,
and a gap-toothed zipper.

Elastic wrists plunged into shallow
pants pockets, tight like shoelaces
before the midnight untying.
Rose-gold hamper slid

beneath the box spring, dragging
cereal pieces to a fine dust
then dissipating with
the morning ritual

bed spread, bed sheet tearing from
a sweaty body to the tune
of a near-siren on the desk.
Leg swing and saunter

to cold tiles like broken glass. Clockwise
turn the shower dial, act clean, turn
it back. Fingers swipe 'cross
the medicine cabinet,

leaving droplets to race to the white wood
frame. Bridge thresholds past the fan-
diced ice air hallway to the closet.
Creep the door closed behind,

pull drawers to the end of their tracks,
find pants. Unhook jacket from bed
post, throw it on one sleeve
at a time, and plunge

elastic wrists into the shallow pockets
and leave.