Evolution

Hooting into lunar dandruff
coagulated, mid-sky
I was an owl
the night I drove through clouds

Wearing a suit jacket
on top of his woolen petticoat
He was a wolf
the day I drove through 1855

Hey, he said, his tail keeping company with his knees.
April dollars won't buy March bread.
What's a girl like you doing with empty pockets?
Get yourself
babies for each breast
a welcome mat
flat and heavy
like you stomach mustn't stay
like your heart can only be

I don't argue
get your grandma
a loaf of bread
Only tell him 'bout the time

in my weathered Honda civic
I followed a sign on a whim and
spun down a side street
into dark gravel
swerving to spare the rabbits
blindly chewing on rocks
the night I drove through clouds
I got gloriously lost
five wheels spinning mud into margarine

I tell him
My heart isn't heavy.

I tell him
My heart sings on empty,

a one woman band,
bells fog stomach and car horns
swelling
with the breath of black swans
and tarmac
and dry red leaves

and I tip my hat

Things That End

Things that end:

hiccups (usually).
heartbeats, heatstroke, senate
elections. Bus route 7 in Saigon,
the road less traveled, ink pens,
fantasy, flexibility, being on fire.
Constipation (usually).

The Roman Empire, dinner yesterday,
contact with my 8th grade
science teacher. The sky
the way our eyes can see it.
Haircuts. Spelling bees. Cricket matches.
The sky the way our eyes cannot.

Ceilings, balconies and being
tucked in. Newsweek subscriptions,
egg whites only, teeth, law
and order, dry sponge, wet clay.

and Christmas mornings
my Christmas mornings
Hamlet's life, Pete's dragon,
all blood and breasts and
berlin walls.

Quite Possibly, But Not Necessarily, a Love Poem

people make all sorts of absurd promises
safe in knowing no one expects results

knot a rope around the moon
wedge it in a gift bag
beside the whole world,
delicately wrapped in red tissue paper?
Anything for you, dear.

I don’t have enough to buy you the world, *****.
I won’t wrestle a mountain lion
I’m too fond of my limbs and face

but I would get your car doors fixed
so they open both ways

No Use Crying Over a Lost Cappuccino, Camp St.

A freshly bought cup of coffee
is at once a wet bar of soap
crushed and lathering
between desperate hands, battling—
like General Custer—
unsuccessfully.

An elegant dive towards pavement,
free at last! bursting, rushing, trembling,
tumbling, thank God almighty,
tides of caffeine, flowing,
a cordless bungy suicide

or perhaps righteous free fall liberation?
The salvation sought in the swallow
could be, too,
in that very spread
insulting the wailing sidewalk

while the spiller’s hands
are curling away, white as foam,
vanishing into pockets and sleeves.

But what of the sprawl?

This hazelnut mess,
smatter of Brasilia’s best beans?

Will the rain, nature’s janitor, take care of this folly?

A piece of litter can be tossed, a doorstep swept,
a runny nose caught and put in time out.

But how long till it rains?
How long, screeches the sidewalk, till it rains?

Short Prose Piece

Stewart Island, Kapipi Bay, 2010, March 9

Very likely the manifestation of the word solitude. I have never been somewhere so quiet. My own words, as I often speak aloud, I respectfully swallowed. I can hear everything here--even little changes in the way the water is lapping at the rocks makes me glance up, wondering what creature has moved the rhythm of the bay. The only other noise comes from dueling birds, singing each other out of tree and nest. There are bright yellow spots on a rock--like mustard rust. Marigold time. That's what time feels like here--golden, frozen in bloom. The turn of this page resonates. I can hear myself blink. I can hear myself be. Stewart, how did your island come to be, or rather come to stay, so silent? Here, close to Antarctica, this patch of the end of the world more resembles the beginning, which would explain why I, in all my modernity, feel like such an intruder.

Vampires, Voyeurs, Exhibitionists

If no one's watching, what does it count?
A parade with no floats is a crowded street,
a mirror to a vampire, just glass.

Even a poet
--despite protest to the contrary (and there will be)--
lacking readers, is nothing more than a delusional English Major
left dusting off stacks of synonyms
to make more room in her study/office/den

For even onlookers
hope to be onlookees in some facet
we all need to be eyeballed
(by our own if circumstances are dire)
to fuel the grotesque need

to brand those shadow monsters of feigned dignity,
our silhouettes,
onto the spotlight

where once situated,
we can bark orders along the lines of...

all floats must process and exude campiness as expected
guffaw over syntax, tired professors and linquistic critics must
judge us! pet us! encourage us

to peek
over the edge of our vanities
and wait for the worst
our most fearsome,
our reflections

Ask Again Later

Sipping soup, I begin to wonder
if the Answer would be worth the destruction
were the world a magic eight ball

Imagine: shaken bakin' babies, confused epileptics,
and a surprising plethora of Baptist Preachers
reenacting the sermon on the mound
with slightly inappropriate enthusiasm

then, hark! the seizure subsides

Sleepily, possibly hungover,
the Answer tiptoes in

gleaming white through the rubble
framed in a beautiful blue acute...

Has-Been

once, a tab of acid
burned the roof of his mouth
snaked through sinuses
into his spongy mass

seduced, he'd worshipped
curvacious dancing bears
rocking coquettishly, playing
heavily discordant piccolos
music hollowed, heavy,

shattering
like most Mondays
like this Monday

like his last family reunion,
and that one porno
he always wished he'd seen

like the devil's sirens--
feared trumptets of nostalgia--
jolting him awake
in the middle of a conference

Where's your hair, man?
Where's the reefer?
How'd your hands get so clean?

Elegy

Have you ever seen a withered walnut?
When first met, it’s quite deceptive.

Straight backed and sturdy,
the walnut boasts invincible
like the chest of drawers
Grandfather built for me
when I was a child.

But once the nutshell splits
youth sputters into gasping age,
less a ghost than a corpse
more a corpse than a body
brown and slightly curling

like Grandfather’s hands
that once built a chest of drawers.

Stars and Stripes Forever

candy cuticles and splotched skin--
my right hand is stained with blueberry juice

a violet leprosy,
connect the dot constellations
drawn into one hand
-ily placed map of the galaxy
blue like boy blue's blue blue horn

if I dragged this berry
down and up my arms
would I look like a zebra?

I could parade out into the streets
like a flame thrower buxom bearded lady

fifteen cents to see the striped American
twenty two cents to lick it off

a circus sight to see, and full of antioxidants

Then I could light my hair on fire
and dance an offering to the goddess of fruit--
to nectar, to color
to sex and poison,
all sweet.

City of Sails

the folk song heard downtown
is the drum of sweet rain
glazing the cooled streets
like the donuts back home
but this isn’t back home

this isn’t Singapore
where chewing gum leads to deportation
this isn’t London
soaked in the stench of history
or Los Angeles,
that elusive country club

Auckland is a patchwork city
yarns of earth and bustle
snipped from each continent
and loosely woven into
the messy noise of this morning

If There is Any Religion, This Is It

my fingers smell like rust
silly me, I left them in the rain again
it was the most comfortable option
in light, last night
of air conditioning and linened beds
I knew I could not lay breathe or sleep

so I took my fingers
to the corn husks and their children
tiny crescent weeds all quenched,
empowered in their dirt--now mud, ever phoenix,
rife with worms
beating their wings beneath the sod
to make the earth move

like the wind
that swept like kitchen floor
into my mouth
till I hiccupped, a happy dustpan
my arms like superman
brushing against trees
like the wings
on the worms
with the wings

look how my hands spin
like loose weather vanes
who totter and rattle
amidst Noah’s flood, Moses’ plague

look how my hands stretch
like stalwart weather vanes
who forever crane their necks
in search of discernment

Entertaining What I Suspect Would Be the Joy of Anonymity

in a quiet suburb pretending
to be a blue color Midwestern city
I’m poised over this paper,
choosing to see 5th ave in the blue ink

to taste the city mice spice, scaffolds and cigars and street heckle
to greet the Indian man on the corner who sells me peaches for cheap
because I ask him about his new shoes.
He always has new shoes.

Listen to the slick sad midwestern blues:
table salt spilling off a table--imitation white niagra, slow.
slow. an exhale from the local stoner,
reefer pooling in the air around his hands
settling into his eyebrows, settling
into the pressed cement the smell of
settling, slow

settling into the red of her shirt
and the matching red of mine
the sound bites of their voices
crackling in and out of my reception
his blue cap, her sideways stare, blush, guilt, duck
this town will never be big enough
for any of us

Letter to a Friend from the Future

She’s going to waffle
putting your affection
inside the crevices of the setting flour
because she thinks you might stick
Well, she might stick!

She’ll be sorry about it,
I thought she might stick!
but not that sorry
not sorry enough to stop
cooking all together.

Because, she’ll muse,
staring into the lightly toasted flannel batter pattern
we could still be friends
with glaring and occasionally unruly sexual tension,
but you could be friends. Still?
Friends, could you be? Stall.
Friends? Stay. You? Stasis.
Could be

stasis,
would be the best way, this
could be the best way, yes
for her to handle (and she’s sorry enough)
for you to handle (is she sorry enough?)

the door handle
against your
best judgment
against her
better intentions,
slippery like glue
the knob in your hand, try
(not) to persuade yourself
dissuade yourself
I might stick

Personal Poem

And you tapped my table to say farewell,
here in Peoria at my place of employment.
I have only this cup of coffee, iced,
and a cornucopia of useless books
spread across the table like thanksgiving,
supposedly here to help me climb mount everest,
if mount everest were a term paper

let us now muse about mountains,
of climbing uphill, stumbling upon rocks (metaphors!)
and belligerent individuals,
or possibly sasquatch,
or possibly you,
(no not table tapping you,
the other you the you I ran into
or rather the you that ran into me)

I was not climbing, dearest you that ran into me
I was only sitting here, unguarded
having thanksgiving
and watching the sky get darker

if I ever climb mount everest
I would like to encounter sasquatch
yes that would be preferable
to an interrupted thanksgiving

and any real or metaphorical rocks--even diamonds
monsters like Big Foot usually have a heart of gold
instead of
a gold face with the heart of a monster
instead of
diamonds which are only unbreakable

it’s going to rain,
I can tell
because the cars have all turned on their headlights
I count the turn signals
and I think, anything that doesn’t break
must not be worth it