for me
one for her
hers was glass filled with liquor
she mixed a powder
like Caribbean sand
out of cylinder tub
with the flick of her hand
into a plastic bottle for me
she mixed tequila with lime
it looked the color of ***
with the flick of her hand
and rubbed salt over the rim
we both guzzled the liquid down
the sky outside grew dim

like eggs benedict, a poached
egg wobbly as it sits. Covered in hollandaise
sauce, spooling on his plate. Spilling
over the sides as he ate! Runny as
his nose the snowy winter he ran

a fever and had a cold. There was a big tear
in her, running like crimson sheer pantyhose,
from her crotch down to her toes. Runny
as the Colorado river. Against the pines

and mountains she's a sliver. Runny as
her hazel eyes. As the tear ducts fill
she cries. It drips like dew drops pearling
on her lips. Runny as drains collecting

all the rain beating down from the sky. Like
the juices in mom's baked apple pie. After all,
she was his honey. But amber sweetness
heated under the fire is hot and runny.

in darkness,
the blackness and I.
My shadow a vest,
these fingers my Sai.

Billowing clouds
clapped their thunder.
There I stood
a soleless sunder.

Brains of spaghetti,
blood the sauce.
And bent I roll
in the dregs and the dross.

Cuffed in chains
I march forward in toil.
Hanging as a mosquito net,
a diaphanous voile.

inside mother's womb
when my eyes were closed
to life's perils and doom? Can I
go back to the time before

time when I was just a thought
before one more line appeared on the
EPT. Can I go back before I was
me? Can I go back before the *****

swam up the tube? Can I block off
the entrance or poison the ****? Can I go
back before they met, when she was inside
her mother's womb? Can I go back to the time

her eyes were closed to life's
perils and doom?  Back to the time
before she was a thought! Before the
pregnancy test was even bought!

circling her face
like bicycle wheels. Splintering
ice-chips clinging to her rose
lips. She’s wearing a frozen

smile, cold as the subway tile. Frost is
a glaze on the bathroom mirror. Her breath
billowing clouds. They're grey as
mother's hair under the chestnut wig that

she wears. The tears were once
a ****, colored as a Rubik cube from
globs of shimmering eye shadow. It's stained
glass, like the church windows from

father's funeral mass. In this prism touched
with autism everything done is rote. Everything
wrote is done. The hail’s blowing around like
juggling ***** of a circus clown.

to you. Couldn't swim in cornflower
lakes of blooming mistakes. Drowned
as the ice cracked this body. Built
me a soddy that sank in the banks

of the Pio. You lost your brio
and sleeve. Cleaved to the past
when this woman could skate a diamond
lake. Spin and circle figure

eights. Pirouettes on tattered
crimson tutus. Stood on battered tiptoes
for you. Now the only lines that rhyme
is tequila mixed with lime.  And salt

the shot glass. The bloat turns out
as gas. Passing on cornflower
lakes. The fallen leaves bid to be raked
and bagged. Conversations nipped/not dragged.

in the gut
with a fist full of apples
from the trunks of his eyes,
cutting me in pieces

like ma's hot pies. Burnt as the
flambe', sliding off him, like whipped
cream. All part of a sick girl's
dream. Like Swiss cheese,
you can stick your finger through

the holes in me. The floating
noodle in the soup. Lying flat
and soggy, a clucking chicken
in the coop. Sitting on the

eggs. Thought I'd crack,
or less be scrambled. I shouldn't
have gambled on the man. Should
have seen the cleaver and ran!