unleashed to roam without
a chain have a home, to shelter them
from the rain. This amour was
growing from a pup into a great

Dane. He pulled tight on my black leather
collar. I was spent like a dollar squashed
inside his billfold. He didn't hold me
for long in his quivering hand. Passed me

up for a cup of dark coffee at the
newsstand. I just wanted a soft
warm lap, a spot to curl up
and take a nap. A smiling

face to greet me at the end of
his day. A ray of golden sunshine
when the sky is black as coal,
and the clouds are grey with snow.

till my stuffing leaked
out. There was less of me
inside of my clothes than
in billowing clouds outside

exposed. Then he pulled
my silk threads with his teeth till they
broke. I looked like a scarecrow,
part of his joke. But he too

unraveled. I thought he was
rock. His shoes and socks
gravel, the size of a pea worn down
by years that he traveled. The sort

that gets wedged in-
between painted crimson
toes. A proxy, is he wearing
emperor clothes.

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.