not the beginning of the alpha- bet but somewhere at its head. perhaps level with the eyebrows wild whipping bushy blatantly untamed eye brows Einstein had nothing on the bravery of her eye brows
she blows batters the shutters we have failed to batten down on Sunday morning and we return to blue berries piebald sheep and that white horse with one blue eye
she is not my sister Beth who is also beautiful
she is bathed in blue starlight believe in her gravity her heft no light balloon she sinks to the bottom of the bath waiting for the water to cool and the bubbles to subside back into oily scum on the surface she doesn’t belong to me or you or the alphabet, really she’s just there 2nd in line to the throne while ‘A’ shines her little tiara always straight on her perfectly shellacked bouffant ah see ‘b’ has crept in even here is there no where she cannot go pregnant belly in front of her she is waiting to become
I ate all the marshmallows. The cat knocked them over and there were grackles. Timbuktu was too far away You make lousy coffee. There is no vaccine for that. I don’t want to go on Tuesday. I haven’t finished Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. Thursdays are always bad for me; they come after Wednesdays. Your check was late.
It's too early in the morning to discuss anything so fraught with unexpressed meanings.
Originally published in Pittsburgh Poetry Houses.
beside our daily lives concrete rituals enrapture love desires like so many Lego bricks erected we finish building our growing collection of voodoo figurines hapless hopeless held up by an ignorant God without jokers in the tarot deck kept semi-comatose in the lock up behind the mini-mart nobody can say who opened the gates or who pinned back yesterday’s quandary right now today surrender to the surgeon who will take us under the ruinous river to verify our wraith full Xanadu our ghosts who yearn to be eaten while the zoetrope flickers
(From Loose Change - Ghost City Press, 2023) Published on The Laundry Line, Tuesday Jan. 28, 2025
I carry a lifetime’s worth of nights in my throat. But only one at a time will fit into the coin pocket of my jeans. The crows keep stealing my dreams. They pawn the grubby rags for a couple of cents a pound. When the burrowing owls pull down the moon and fling it at my heart, they intend to maim but miss and spill marmalade moon shine on the floor. I cannot stop to wait for you to breathe. I cannot stop pointing out the disappearing stars.
My worship of you ends in dismay as my wound becomes a dispatch full of sweet licorice lies.
Adultery becomes advantage. Motels morph into mother-cells. My cheap dress becomes an even cheaper dressing gown. My shoes with their stiletto heels, now walk on stilts, unable to carry our heft. A fetish for pain is transformed; remakes itself into fetters for the painted lady’s transistor.
Was your mastery of me, a mastodon’s bondage to bone?
Did lust overcome fear as a lute overcomes feathers? Or is memory just a whisper, a mendacity, a whistling swan?
