The overripe mango that sits promptly on my desk stares at me through its one eye, indignantly asking to be eaten – before it goes bad.
I consider, strongly, the mango’s proposition.
Contemplating the level of hunger, or desire I have for this demanding piece of fruit.
It may be that the latte I just finished burnt off any remaining taste buds I have, or it may be that I find
something amusing about holding a mango hostage of its pride – but I just can’t eat it.
A once firm, confident specimen edging ever closer to becoming a wrinkly, seeping, sack of rotten juice.
Knowingly, I chain it to its fate by refusing to slice the skin back and swallow its sweetness.
It demands to be mutilated rather than aged.
As I sit here writing of my hostage, it continues to stare through its eye – spiting me.
Cursing me with future putrid fruit, with worms in my apples, and with brown bananas.
Oh, how I hate brown bananas.
This mango has learnt well in the time it’s spent in my room, it knows my weaknesses.
I always knew that fruit had character, but this mango – I tell you, it’s something else.

Oh!  There it is!
The blood of my Mothers’
Sins
Blossoming on
My white sheets
Like a bouquet of English roses.
A shame -
Laundry day had
Been yesterday.  

My thighs have been painted
Rouge -
They blush
Like my cheeks
When my gaze
Lingers on my body
Too long in the mirror
As I put on my Sunday dress.

The needles in my
Lower back fill my
****** with blood -
I am a woman now -
And as such I must
Wake before the sun
And wash my sheets
And my body
Before anyone has a chance
To smell the iron and the shame
Between my legs.  

I have never been so
Acutely aware of my body:
My sore ******* feel like
Overripe tomatoes ready to burst,
My stomach bloated and taking up
Space I’m told is not ladylike -
My head throbs, my limbs ache, and
I continue to shed my insides.
How is it I never noticed
The cry of my body before?

A week of blood
Before I have served my sentence
For a woman
Who dared to disobey -
I clean the stains
And wash myself
Away.

i have a break at 12 o'clock
will you please come over
you don’t have to knock
i’ll leave the door open
it will be unlocked
a bouquet of flowers
i’ll have in stock
a vase and a candle
a knife and a blade
a face and a cigarette
its all about the way we explain
i mean rationalize away
do time-lines justify our decline into tyranny
send me back again to sublime infancy
retrofit the celibate instigator
lemniscate the elephant’s fingerprints
impress me with wit and charm
storm troopers unarmed
star-gazers, shadow-haters, sand-blasters, ice-skaters,
morning's lovers, fathers, daughters, shoulders and elbows
rub brows and crease foreheads
wrinkles in your timelines
define lines as destiny unwinds
reminds me of blinding light
the heights of old empires
sire warriors, stories as tall as soldiers
for real, heal the split between mind and body
kindly, lovingly, bump up against me
and kiss me again
i am music fused together with eternity
space and dust and rusted armpits
a hundred diamonds, drops of sweat
skin like leather, weatherproof, foolproof too
determine to use it all
for you are the muse of all
do as you need to
fuse it together lest it come apart again
return to heaven and mend the tear
split the hair or the atom
magic is a language
tragic is the cancerous neglect of syntax
emptiness is manic
gargantuan attacks of presence
defenseless, we are taught worthless ****
neglect it, but remember important words
stories, looms of drawings
forming in my mind’s eye
i cannot be bought or controlled by pirates
the best moments are private
you are not invited
so go home and create your own zone of entertainment
its necessary
your gentle fingers
blessing my soul
courage to roll with life’s blows
no need for stoics
or poets who deny reality’s arguments
slippery slopes
walking tight ropes
can you cope with all this mistletoe
restring your bow
dance in the snow as if everyone knows
you are crazy in love with the whole
motionless vision swift as an arrow
roofless rooms
prom queens flip you off and turn you on
sons and daughters, lions of the prairie
a child portable and small
respects the walls that you’ve made
they are not your cage but your shelter
self culture is affluent and not arrogant
sand mandalas tall as waterfalls
golden rainbows pour from the faucet in the sky
like mighty images
wisdom bridges the gaps in our imagination
i can’t wait to get this on the page
written in stone, reflecting thrones
made from the bones of pharaohs
consciousness narrows as you approach
are you a cockroach, coach or a student
strokes of wonder for different folks
cold call your own homes
do you prioritize lightning over thunder
words over rubber
sandwiches to clutter
are you interested in diamonds or other
precious gemstones
that flutter like butterflies when i utter
emeralds like butter
do you waste time arranging your clutter
stuttering utter nonsense
frequencies wasted, gentleness chased away
fantasies radioactive
magic lacks targets
darkens our fathers
keep chasing actions
satisfaction is attractive
your eyes are like fragments of rubies in the fire
i see beauty in desire, features in the sky
i look skyward and see higher
minds are wired to remain stagnant
stranded in a lack of entertainment
change this and make your own amazement
wonder over thunder, lick me down under
gone asunder like the burning acropolis
topple this bottomlessness
can't stop this, its impossible
i wonder do you make blunders
in underground mountains
we shout words like fountains shoot water
curtains topple over
and form a blanket over our consciousness
after our performances
swarms of crazy people leave the theater
shattered and too stunned to speak
to ****** to leak they keep walking down south
toward Plymouth Rock,
Mammoth Mountian or Rehoboth Beach
take stock of the situation and just move
first one out is rewarded
sordid and sorted like straw from the hay stacks
caskets of black iron casings
tastings of wine whose shelf-life is expired
past due cheese overripe and stinky
like mustard dusted with lightning
striking on time is all that we have
thinking that was a close call
we fall down and get up, remove the uppercuts
and lowercases from our mouths
doubt is a ***** word heard too often,
coughing from a coffin she offers me her hand
cold as ice cream, these nouns are deafening
love is lazy like a muffin
and hot like a dumpling
but a liaison with time cannot be rushed
i have lived long enough to learn this
a privilege to give birth to this moment
again and again vintage feathers
send me your sweaters
detest impostors who give robotic answers
i am in wonder at all this grammar
that i was unaware of
ignorant as mustard
and smooth like custard
in this blustery weather
i am glad i wore a sweater
and have an umbrella
to keep me dry and safe
i am in love walking toward the gate
and boarding that plane
i am your heart served on a plate
with a side of coleslaw, soul food for dinner
you are a winner and i am your hunger
a porcelain gravestone
a copper bathtub with claws
stored in your basement
storerooms cold as a skating rink
please don't think, unless its about me
let sentences drift away
while we chase arguments from yesterday's
armistice

How this **** fable instructs
And mocks! Here's the parody of that moral mousetrap
Set in the proverbs stitched on samplers
Approving chased girls who get them to a tree
And put on bark's nun-black

Habit which deflects
All amorous arrows. For to sheathe the ****** shape
In a scabbard of wood baffles pursuers,
Whether goat-thighed or god-haloed. Ever since that first Daphne
Switched her incomparable back

For a bay-tree hide, respect's
Twined to her hard limbs like ivy: the puritan lip
Cries: 'Celebrate Syrinx whose demurs
Won her the frog-colored skin, pale pith and watery
Bed of a reed. Look:

Pine-needle armor protects
Pitys from Pan's assault! And though age drop
Their leafy crowns, their fame soars,
Eclipsing Eva, Cleo and Helen of Troy:
For which of those would speak

For a fashion that constricts
White bodies in a wooden girdle, root to top
Unfaced, unformed, the ******-flowers
Shrouded to suckle darkness? Only they
Who keep cool and holy make

A sanctum to attract
Green virgins, consecrating limb and lip
To chastity's service: like prophets, like preachers,
They descant on the serene and seraphic beauty
Of virgins for virginity's sake.'

Be certain some such pact's
Been struck to keep all glory in the grip
Of ugly spinsters and barren sirs
As you etch on the inner window of your eye
This ****** on her rack:

She, ripe and unplucked, 's
Lain splayed too long in the tortuous boughs: overripe
Now, dour-faced, her fingers
Stiff as twigs, her body woodenly
Askew, she'll ache and wake

Though doomsday bud. Neglect's
Given her lips that lemon-tasting droop:
Untongued, all beauty's bright juice sours.
Tree-twist will ape this gross anatomy
Till irony's bough break.

My being craves a sun so vibrant
an unwinding summer
for my wilted heart anew
Heat that gives the air such humid kisses
leaving it stifling, sweet, and sticky
Rays of fiery gold
that pierce my cold, pale, and weathered skin
Rushes of warm air flowing over my body
heating me up
burning my skin
melting away my makeup
and carrying away the emotions
that I wear on my sleeve
My heart is eager
to be naive, carefree, and open
I long to be freed
to burst like an overripe plum
These walls I’ve built up
are ready to fall

“It was so quiet, one of the killers would later say, you could almost hear the sound of ice rattling in cocktail shakers in the homes way down the canyon.”

William Garretson was the gardener of 10050 Cielo Drive, in Los Angeles, a summer house rented by Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate. He lived in the guest house on the property. On August 9th, 1969, members of the Manson family visited the residence and brutally murdered all the inhabitants, as well as Garretson’s friend Steve Parent. Garretson claims he had no knowledge of the murders that night. He is the only survivor of the Tate Murders.

your screams sounded
like fiberglass breaking
an almost impossible noise
like a hemorrhage at midnight
i was walking through the garden
and i swear
i heard the neat click
when he severed the phone line
if only i had known

i have thought up one hundred scenarios
in which i saved your life
but there is only one
when i don't
and every night i try to justify this reality
because i could have sworn
the sound of their boots
on the steel fence
was the telephone
ringing

when they saw the headlights
swerve over the lawn
steve was as good as dead
shattered like a lightbulb
under pressure
four shots pressed into his forehead
a candid bullet kissed him faceless
his absence was
a tell tale piquancy of slaughter
i lay in bed that night
and turned my face to the wall
when i heard the screams

tell me i reek coward
say the raw red skin of my knuckles
shaved away from the foundation of my raised veins
as i sat through another police interrogation
are nothing compared to the red poppy
that blossomed in the center of his chest
call me callous
but i will never forgive myself
for trimming the flowers
that sat innocent on the coffee table
in the middle of a mass grave
all i can say is
i was just the gardener

i found her
blooming on the living room floor
the baby cut
weeping from her umbilical cord
still attached to mother and father
by a rope traveling from neck to neck
thorny slices of fetal skin
peppering the carpet
blood sprays still wet
were soaking into the wooden door
sadism comes in many
limp limbed contortions
but only one color
and i saw *HIS smile
carved in the cavity
of her stomach
i swear to god
i wish i could say
i didn't see it coming

i found the severed tendons
of his fingers
suspended in the eerie light
of the swimming pool
pruned like overripe plums
the remnants of his face
scattered across the driveway
like taraxacum seeds
their bodies all
hanging like wilted stems
broken xylems hinged to sepals
by threads of sap
running down uprooted ligaments
there is not enough therapy in this world
to cure the silence in the garden
upon the aftermath of execution

the shapes of murders' footprints
left raised beds in my shoulder blades
manure smeared ***** across my lips
every flower i have ever planted since
has languished in the smell of your corpses
melded into the callouses
of my finger tips
i am just the gardener
and i am all broken anthers
petals shriveled, toxic
call me a survivor
but there is blood inside my filaments

your hair smells like brimstone
in my memories that swirl under the pale streetlight
and in the reflective shards fogged over by our words

swollen overripe sicksweet mangoes

colors are more than the sway of hips
or a glint in the eyes laced with starbursts
and a face contains no infinites

i remember the smoky silence

drowned in fiction

The sun falls swift as an overripe cherry,
Lighter than air, it still laughs like a fairy
Warm and wet and juicy and red
Along the horizon it slowly spreads.
Tossing up splatter to stick to the clouds
Filling the sky, its sweetness astounds

Then washed away by crisp starry rain
Silvery ice that soaks through your veins.
And each sweet day, and every night
The lights fly away, and out of sight,
But surely my dear, to beautiful eyes
Sunset sweet always brings sunrise

The heat of the tequila sunrise
On the seashore of Cape Creus
Melts flaccid pocket watches,
Soft as overripe cheese;
The dreamscape's permanence dissolves
Before distant amber cliffs;
On sweet, rotting flesh termites sup;
A time fly lands.
The monstrous fleshy mutation
Across the seascape draped -
Deformed, distorted,
Disfigured with decay;
Centipede shades lash alien flesh
And sluggish tongue oozes
From the snout of the surreal
Self-spectre of Salvador's craft;
Persistence of Memory.

We are rotten now.
You are rotten, moldy, putrid with disease.
I'll separate my pristine state from you.
Get the **** away from me.

You are rotten now.
You are contagiously, disgustingly rotten.
I'll pretend there's still some use in you,
Throw you in the compost, forgotten.

You are a memory.
Overripe, painful, noxious.
You were a part of me.
Infecting, stinking, rancid.

This is my goodbye to you
This is the routine compost.
This is how I say, "We're through,"
This is how I let you go.

yodelaugh bluebells
bugle the frenchorn debate;
youngheld punchropes
in freezing cordoba rain when the
silt hits the sand we’re all
****** into oblivion like
so much candyswirl
into the labial plains of
galaxyfrost are you in sentia where
the sun don’t rain and the sky don’t
glow grey beneath the hooded lambswool grain
there ain’t no gumption like
compunction like
eating sand to feed your ****** daughters overripe
mangoes hit the cement and explode in saffronochre gutspill
when else
does the world end

He sat strapped into his chair like a shrunken scarecrow.
A motorized miniature from the Wizard of Oz, roaming the yellow brick road in his chrome chariot.
His clothes hung from his stick thin limbs like fresh wash on a clothesline.
As new as the day his Mom brought them home from the store.
Adournments for a body on display, not designed to be used.

Around and round circles ring, whole, symmetric complete.
But the coil of life, puzzle pieces in a whirl, must be free, infinite, unfettered.
The text misprinted, the logic destroyed, the flesh misshapen, the extremties unusable.

Tied to his wheelchair like the scarecrow to his rack, guarding a field of linoleum on the hospital ward.
His eyes blind to color and light, I saw only clouds as I peered into his mind with my inquisitive scope.
The boy's hair had the texture of straw on his nubbin head and he smelled of dry leaves before the winter's chill.
His useless limbs twisted and fine, delicate as dried twigs, they draped his John Deere in the vegetable garden of his imprisoned life, bound with the barbed wire of his treacherous genes.

He could move his head, and played a game of cat and mouse to us tinmen, who lumbered by his throne with our toolboxes full of bright scopes and latex gloves, frozen saucers and wasp sharp stings.
His head would bow, limp upon his neck like an overripe sunflower at the end of its stalk.
As our footsteps grew louder his Jack-in-the-box head would fly up, a clown's grin upon his silly face.
Was this the boy or his disease we would wonder despite the reruns of his show.
What could he know? This crumpled moonbeam parading as a child in rumpled clothes.

But one day upon a whim, I took him for a ride into the big blue sky and over the rainbow.
I grabbed the handles of his chair and slowly, slowly began to spin.
His head shot up like a shooting star, his twiggy limbs stiffened even more.
Faster and faster, I whirled him and twirled him.
A twister on the hospital floor, sending doctors, nurses and patients diving for cover as we spun, building like cotton candy strands.
His mouth opened wide, a huge smile spread across his face like sunshine pouring over a mountain's edge.
Beams of light speared through the clouds that filled his eyes.
A rusty hinged croak jumped from his throat as he hee-hawed a laugh as I flung him to the moon, ruby red slippers upon his feet.

Open up your canyon lungs
and let me breathe like I am living.
I have forgotten what this tastes like.
The sky is awfully quiet,
like it has something to hide.
Dig up your bruised knuckles
from those sand-filled pockets.
We will rebuild the sun.
I sink my teeth into forgiveness
and it pours out my mouth.
Overripe;
I always wait too long.
Foolish, to keep important things
in drawers you never look in.
So I’ve dug up the front yard,
there were directions here somewhere.
Do not look at me like the stopwatches on our hearts
are the same.
Mine is counting up.
But forget that I left the front door unlocked,
this is a postcard from where I am visiting.
I hope it makes you hopeful too.
I’m sorry I don’t say things I don’t mean.
You are the ocean,
and I never know where to put my hands.

He tells me of his problems.
His job, his girlfriend, his friends, his home
life.
And I nod and I listen.
And I interject sometimes with a cliché or a suggestion, with as much compassion as I can summon.
And he sighs
and takes a long drag from his cigarette, and paws the ground with his Nikes, and hands me the can of beer we are sharing.
And he inhales
                             deeply
as though the air itself can fumigate the scribbles crisscrossing his skull
and with a wisp of smoke
he starts to say something
I don’t know what but
instead, he
                      pauses
in mid-breath
and he turns and looks at me
with sad eyes
But how are
                        you
he says.  
And I pause
just
       long
               enough.

Just long enough for me to look around and sigh;
just long enough for the American Spirits between our fingers to smolder
and for me to weigh the pounder of flat Tecate in my other hand;

just long enough for an overripe lemon to drop
or for a moon flower to blossom
or for a pair of black wings to beat back the wind
or for a bead of dew to skate down a blade of grass;

just long enough for the streak of a lone meteorite to span the sky;

or just long enough for our bones to vibrate in time with the rattle and sizzle and sputter of spraycans in the dark streets behind us
or for the clarion anguish of a million and more homeless to be drowned out by the wail of one sole siren;

I pause
and the world
                           persists.

the earth lurches its creaking bulk sunward for one more day
and the dawn establishes its circumference like a gold aurora;

the desert wind whips down the slopes of Hollywood Hills, past the observatory and Mount Olympus and down Sunset
and its hot dust scours the sidewalk and and slams into our bared and chattering teeth;

And I feel Brian edge

closer to me
concerned
but I have no
                          sense.

The fuming crescendo of space pulses in my head.
My heart is gored through and through by a billion billion whistling neutrinos.
An avalanche of fire from the hills and an inexorable nimbus of smoke advancing on this scatterplot city, apocalyptic-like.

And Brian feels
it now
            too.

A stifled convulsion of thunder.
A muffled ignition of time.
This
         city
an explosion and implosion, expansion and contraction, all thermite and naphtha in its nucleosynthesis, fission and fusion simultaneous;

this pause
just
       long
               enough

for a thousand people or more to grasp for a final breath, their gaping mouths in awe of the energy of one moment;
for this dying
                           place
antenna of flesh and metal, to transmit its final static into the boiling background of the universe until its spiral arms flail no more.

And I contemplate the effect of gravity on a ghost
and the time it takes for the geology of the self to schism
and the fault line in my soul to displace
and the resultant tremors to ripple
through my body and into my epicentered eyes

but I already
                          know
and so does Brian.

He wraps me in his arms
until my trembles subside
and I think
I have paused
just
       long
               enough

to learn the meaning of friend.

A sweetness comes with age,
  like fruit that’s overripe

A Poet then a Sage,
  on this journey into night

A wish distilled from all regret,
  its seeds to be re-sewn

A sweetness comes with age,
  that buried youth could never know

(Villanova Pennsylvania: October,2016)

The Blueberry tried

to escape from my lips

but instead

it ended in my hand

and back to my lips again.

The fall, for it, must have felt a lifetime
after dodging death once
but
like all things
something found it
a gentle touch turned crushing
snuck up from under it
bringing to the brink and past again

I feel its little soul
squeeze out on my tongue
bitter
sweet
almost overripe, but cooked in brown sugar sauce
it whirled from death so many times
that when I finally came
I found it in its best suit
and I robbed it even of that

Or perhaps, the suit of old age
of ripening,
isn't quite its best
maybe
when it was unripened
and pale
on the bush
perhaps that would have been more fitting
for me to rob him
of his style

her grandmother’s hand feels like an overripe peach and there’s not much behind her glossy eyes. the nursing home smells like disinfectant and the powdery smell of old women. jane tucks her feet under her chair as she watches the vacant stare on her grandmother’s face and wonders if her grandmother will notice when she stops coming. the soft buzz of television and the chatter of nurses feels very far away and the room feels too big for the two of them. jane’s grandmother raised her when her own parents were too drunk or coked up to remember they had even had a daughter and her first, second, third stroke had left her soft and empty. jane kisses her forehead, leaving a strawberry-colored mark on her grandmother’s pale skin and she slips a paperweight from the nurse’s desk into the pocket of her dress

the coat is heavy and camel-colored and hangs off jane’s small figure, nearly obscuring her. the collar nestles under her ears and she’s warm, even in the chill of the dusty second-hand shop down the street, with the watery-eyed cashier who watches her suspiciously and waits for his cigarette break. the weight is comforting and she hugs it in closer to her before removing it and stroking the shiny polyester lining. jane waits a few minutes before she pulls out a bundle of carefully stacked bills and quietly buys the overcoat without making eye contact.

at home, jane’s neat handwriting fills the last page of the journal she’s been keeping for the past few months. from her desk drawer she pulls two more of the same. the details of her life coat the pages and it occurs to her how small, how ordered, how utterly unremarkable her days have been. this elicits no real emotion and jane pours herself a half glass of wine and lies on the couch, fully clothed, and breathes so slowly her chest hardly moves. she wonders if it will hurt.

she places the coat on her neatly-made bed and stands in front of her bathroom mirror. her hair is long enough to touch the waistband of her skirt and it tangles over her shoulders and back like a mass of seaweed before she gathers it into a ponytail and snips it off, just beneath her ears. there’s nearly ten inches of her soft hair in her fist and in the mirror jane looks sharper and meaner than before. she takes the same scissors and cuts a slit in the hem of the coat and drops the hair into the space between the lining and the thick wool. next falls the paperweight, the journals, a bottle of pills she will no longer take twice daily. the coat is sewn up with small, neat stitches.

down the road from the home is a wide stretch of anemic sand and silvery water. the breeze off the ocean tugs and twists the coat like the hands of insistent children yet jane walks solidly on, feeling more opaque than she has in years. the rocks along the beach are smooth and slightly warm from the sun and she slips the most beautiful into her pockets as she nears the sleepy waves of the shore. jane never stops walking. her shoes are the first to become soaked but soon the water infiltrates her hemline, her waist, her chest, her neck. the short strands of her once flowing hair float momentarily before the water slips over her head like a sheet. jane’s body does not float, does not struggle, does not resurface.

i.
Eve has hands like a wrecked garden: dirt caked under her fingernails, wild and vicious and thorn-covered; wild and sunstruck and crawling. She presses her palms into the grass underneath the orchards and prays a blasphemy.

ii.
This is how it goes: there is always a boy, or maybe a snake. There is a time before, with the darkness so whole and absolute it chokes, and there is a time after, with burning light and shame so heavy it puts you on your knees.
This is how it goes: your summerborn cheeks flushed but your eyes cold and barren and wintered.
This is how it goes: you are made from bones that never settled into the earth.

iii.
The apples hanging from the trees have gone nearly overripe and heavy, bending from the boughs and flushed red.
Eve has a mouth sticky-sweet and soft, a body like a rosebush in bloom.
Eve has a bird's nest of hair that calls home only vultures.
This is how it goes: there is always a hunger for more.

iv.
Eve presses her palms against the planes of her stomach, against the soft curves the moon has smoothed onto her.
Eve presses her palms into the grass and howls: *"I will not bear you fruit."

This is what I remember:
the rasp of your callouses against my hips,
and the way your eyelashes would settle
like snowflakes on my cheekbones
if you brought your face close enough.
This is what I remember:
the whir of the air conditioner
struggling against the afternoon heat.
Too short shorts.
Vinyl diner seats sticking to my thighs,
pulling uncomfortably at the skin.
Blueberry cobbler and coffee left too long in the ***.
I don't know if it was me
or you
or me with you-
the way I would bruise pretty and quick
beneath your fingertips,
like a summer peach just shy of overripe.
This is what I remember:
filling myself with you and dime-book poetry,
both worn by time and the carelessness of others.
My wet hair on your pillowcase.
Your eyes.
Your eyes.
Your eyes;
irreverent and devoted.
There was religion in you-
divine words written in the spaces between your ribs.
You took whiskey like holy communion.
And me too.
Your bedroom faced the East.
Mornings were molasses and sugarcane and dragging feet.
This is what I remember:
ruined shoes and over-stretched T-shirts.  
The smell of lake water.
Mud between my toes.
Changing leaves floating down around me.
Cold doesn't come here like other places.
Snow gathers on trees and in hair and melts easy.
This is what I remember:
warming my hands in your coat pockets,
then with cups of tea-
Earl Grey brewed so strong it made my head ache.
I am more used to night terrors than I ever was to you.
This is what I remember:
feeling.
The flu in September,
then again in December.
You felt more like a fever dream than anything else-
blurry;
fantastical;
difficult to recall.
You left me sixteen voice mails;
sixteen unheard messages;
sixteen times I pressed nine to delete.
This is what I remember:
me,
stronger.

.
.
i want to pull you apart in sections like an overripe orange
and lick all the juice off of your skin
.

An author must understand the craft
of picking such
fruit.
The patience to resolve and then
pluck
the ending, ripe on the branch.

But any reader can taste the sweetness,
Satisfying, although it leaves such a
Singular   lingering   taste
An urge to bite
   and bite
                   and bite
until only the seeds are left,
embedded in the folds of you brain,
watered by your memory, to            grow.

Though we say that reading is our escape
All readers want reality in the end
An overripe “deus ex machina”
can never                     satisfy

the craving for
a good ending.

The memory of your battered work boots,
tipped on their sides and haphazardly strewn about
the back hallway, my mother
asking you to put them away.

To the love song playing on the radio,
you recalled that the first time you
heard it, you were standing in Times Square
and you immediately thought of my mother.  (I
wonder if you still think of her.)  You
picked up a can of Miller.  You took a swig.

My sister, just a few months old and laying in
her bassinet, plucked from the comfort and placed
into her carrier.  You toted her around with you,
took her to meet the crowd in the beer garden.
You took two sips.

On the weekends, you would lounge on the couch with
race cars in your eyes.  Your thoughts were far
away from little girls playing dress up and
little girls toying with dolls.  Your thoughts were on
the equipment from work that you had
begun hoarding.  You took three gulps.

My weekends, spent with my grandparents, felt
like mini vacations.  Your cool distance and rotten
behavior towards my mother felt like arms outstretched,
keeping me away, forcing me away.  Childhood like a peach
out in the sun for too long, overripe and decaying,
you threw it in the trash and I helped.  

The sour taste in my mouth is leftover childhood
ignorance, the kick in my gut when I think about you
is leftover betrayal—I will not mourn a traditional
childhood, I will mourn your lack of apathy.  You will
never know remorse.  

The phone will ring, and I will not answer.  You will
leave messages, and I will delete them.  We are
on two different planes now,
                                                      Daddy.

She hands me the apple,
Plump and green,
I bite
Apple smell soaks the air,
**** tangy
The next apple she gives
Is red
A band of yellow
Bite
Crunch crunch
Overripe sweet
Soft and tasting of summer
The last summer
All I remember is a hospital bed
A nurse telling my mother
Critical
Goodbye great grandma
Before we leave I give an apple back
Just ripe, crunchy and sweet
The visit after she hands it back
She says, don’t forget me
And with tears in her eyes
A wrinkly hand closes around mine
I’ll see you later
No
Not ever
She replies
After she died, I tried to keep the last apple of hers
My eight year old brain not believing
I thought she would live forever
Please, mommy
Tell me I’m dreaming
I put it in the freezer
3 months later
Rotten at the core.
With a burst of disgust I throw it away
Nothing left
Nothing gold can stay

They sold her house
The apple tree,
The last apple

When you’re dancing underwater, as with feet so deep
inside of the ground. In my absence; you feel so free
as I’m not around. So shy to show off your two left feet,
I’m the least embarrassed to see you at you’re cheeks redness;
as like two overripe apples, (hanging around desire)

Toes shaky as the business hands at the longest meet
and greet, I’m so overjoyed as you dance a night;
would you at least dance one last dance with me?
While singing a happy tune with joyful tears, two weeks of
water works, and choking words, (of how to explain my love)

So accustomed to being here before, crushing my heart,
just to impress a crush. Speed dating conversations; just to
get a feel of the rush.

High on emotions; careful not to crash, as plain expressions
does many harm. But who’s going to put up with the bull,
of the sheets I use to cover the beds of love; I've made to rest
away from despair?

Flattery is key, a twisting lock into a glimpse of your heart,
One last dance it seems we all have; under the music of
life's grand stage, (do enjoy the show)

I enjoy watching you at your most vulnerable, as I'm so
vulnerable in my eyes barely focused on anything else
but you. We all live a single life, but a better chance of it when
we dance together in it as two.

So shall you and I dance?

caught! caught! caught!
lustrous bodies tampering with light on either
side
my hands suffused on my knees
my eyes closed against them

dreams about drunkeness and
rain on the back of necks
hiding places
and mouths like ribbon convulsing in september
wind.
but no sound
ever.
feverish,
silent existence.

wake up unsure of the
solid
wary of gravity.

the bodies float along
side my own
even more
animated then before
dripping with pulpy colour
overripe and smelling of death
and summer
and backalleyways as tight and hot
as a vein
and hair dipped in seawater.

i keep tricking myself
into thinking
it is about choice
and reality falls away
like a row of convicted
bodies
backed against a wall

and then it is just me
coy, faceless, constricted like a mouse with
fangs in my neck
and them, bleeding
fantasy
all
heart
all
heart
with

teeth.