off some sea-beaten shore,
riding crestfallen waves
propelling a long wooden
oar. His back is slumped right

here in his rollerblade chair. But
his body is limp as his stringy
grey hair. And when I talk it's
like talking to air. His cheeks,

sunken valleys, pale as the noon
day moon. His face wrinkled and
dried like a prune. His lips hard, and
closed tight as a clam. His belly

is soft as strawberry jam. And
to think I was his doxy back in
the day, when I was young and had
moxie, and his legs were a sleigh.

like a watercolor in a wooden
frame standing in the rain. Reds
bled with the blues to create
a purple hue. She wore it as

a brass weathervane high
in a cornflower sky blowing in
the wind, spinning in every direction
till the **** broke off

like a piece of poptart. She
wore it like a river running into
the valley. There was erosion from
all her emotion. She slapped

it on like thunder clouds
clapping out loud. Lightning
striking down a cherry tree. Swimming
in shards of jubilee.

of orange butterflies
that lies hidden in the depths
of her dress. They cannot flap
their wings. They hang loose

as strings, unraveling. They built
a nest in her breast. She has a
pocket of tears that she airs in
the dark morning before the sun

rises. Before she paints her
eyes in black she puts them back in,
like pencils in a tin. She has
a pocket of smiles she takes out

once in a while so folks do not
ask. It's part of her mask. She has
a pocket of dreams no one has seen
stitched in her favorite color of red

that she wears every night to
bed. It's only a pocket, and a pocket
is small. She scrawls out her dreams on
a napkin. Folds the paper to look at later.

a garden with golden strand
pearls of dewdrops. Even if
the rain stops not a day
go by where a flower

wilt and dry. She’d fill
the rivers and seas so they'd
spill into the land. Every town
build a dam to hold it all in. She's a

tsunami that drowns a whole
army with her water bucket showering.
Like a running faucet that rips in-
between skips of heartbeats and

butterflies. She'd implode
the tallest building from her dripping
into ceilings. Shatter all the glass
in one fell pass. I remember the cold

December when her eyes froze as
lakes. Right there on her face
I could skate a figure eight. It’s been
the longest winter. Tears are

splinters that cut across my skin, like
peeling an onion, layer after layer. Now
her eyes are flames. A crimson rose
buried under the April snow.

is what he gave. Crumbs of
cake, ice shaved. Bits
and pieces are all he
conjured. Can you fault a girl

if she wandered? Odds and
ends thrown in a drawer. So many
times she walked out the door, to
only crawl back and beg

for more. Bric-a-brac placed
on the shelves. These are things
in themselves. A smidgen here,
a smidgen there. That is all

he had to share. Is she just a speck,
flecks of lint brushed off in the wave of
his hand? A grain of sand on the
shore? Sebum sitting in his pore?

like a tall glass of steamed
hot milk. And he spilled it
on the floor. And left it there
to sour. I poured my fervor

like a rain shower
in a grey cloudy sky
till his backyard was flooded
by a full-blooded woman's

sigh. I poured my fervor
on my angel sleeves. And he
lopped it off in one fell
chop like a branch on a tree. I

poured my fervor like cremated
ashes over the ocean. All this
emotion was carried off in a wave,
that became my watery grave.

sponge, turning and
twisting like an otter till
every ounce of water is a rolling
bead on her. She's dropping mold

from the ceiling. Peeling back
layers of paint over the rot. No one
can cover the ugly black spot. A musty
smell of old books and wet

socks. She's a spiked slice of
ice weeping from the eaves into
a deep freeze. She's hot candle
wax trickling down the side,

rough as rawhide. Running rain
in the sewer. Plopping like stones
heavy and wet. Another day lets out
the same as it rose in – draining