Sticks

For months, the boy piled

sticks in his front yard.

The neighborhood watched

as their young architect

stacked and stacked

over the months

until his pile of twigs grew

into a magnificent fort.

And after toiling

half a year, his structure

stood solid in the yard.

But not an hour after the boy

laid the last beam across

his roof, the neighborhood

raccoon snuck into the fort.

The bandit ferreted away the

stalks that underpinned the child's

structure, to build a shelter of his own.

And that night the evening winds blew in

to disassemble the little hut, leaving

the boy with a pile of kindling.

Cool

Air conditioner --

I would say it is the best

piece of modern tech.

Release

The circus freak piled

nickel upon nickel

into his nasal cavity.

With each new coin

his temples swelled,

and just from watching,

the onlookers felt an

uncomfortable pressure

pulsing in their eardrums.

Then, in an instant,

the circus man sneezed

and the crowd watched

awed, as they were

showered with thousands

of pennies.

Eggs

Don't fucking mention eggs

to me. If I hear one analogy

about baskets or hatching --

Here's the thing, about chickens.

Once they hatch, they are still just

baby chickens. They are walking

death-traps. How do any of them

ever survive? They are fuzzy balls

looking for something to crush them.

Why does anyone care about chickens

hatching, anyway?

I had an egg once. And as it grew

never once did

I count it as a chicken.

I watched it incubating.

Just stared at a single --

no... wait. Single

is a counting word --

just looked at a --

just watched the heated

box and its contents and

then

crack.

A beak, burst through

the flaky shell,

pawing about for

air.

Yes.

One chicken.

But as I stared,

the shell crumbled

away to show patches

of scale, and fangs

grinning

wide from a full-

lipped mouth.

The beak that I

had hopefully counted,

nothing more than

a quivering bone

spur -- stretching

and snapping from

my beast's elbow.

Good God --

what was

I waiting for?

untitled

Men and women
from the department of chastity
not knocking into one another.

Fun Stuff

Speaking of things that aren’t fun anymore

(except in that nostalgia sense where the fun

that used to be fun now just feels meta and sad),

what of swing sets, sidewalk sprints, scary stories,

she selling sea shells? I would gladly trade in sibilance,

the term, the act, the recognition that it’s something

more than the sound a snake says, if I could still enjoy

waiting to see how soon I lose my grip and/or nerve,

spending last bits of energy for a short-lived ambition,

leaning in closer to hear the scariest part I can’t not hear,

or marveling that try as I might my words come out wrong.

How convenient if I could still enjoy such things,

nevertheless routine.

Progress

When did it stop

being fun

to cross things

off a list?

What happened

to a sense

of accomplishment?

Where did I lose

interest

in making progress?

Admit

Go ahead. Keep dragging

yourself through

the sludge, over

walls, up mountains. Just

think how nice it will feel

when you finally admit

defeat.

Time Travel

Each morning I wake up

in the past. For moments

I feel myself surrounded

by things from years gone by.

But as my eyelids flick open,

I am snapped through a wormhole

and hurtled forward

to today.

Toxic

In New Zealand there is a certain plant

that bees sometimes pollinate.

This particular shrub causes the bees

to produce, poisonous honey.

I was terrified to learn

about this phenomenon.

I just can't bear

to hear that something

I consider one of life's

unqualified comforts

might actually

be trying to kill me.

A Courtyard Marriot outside Trenton

Standing on a porcelain husk

in the Courtyard

Marriot outside Trenton

I am naked and cannot bear 

travel, soaked through my clothes.

I cannot scrub off the odor of ages

one through one hundred,

the grease from Southwest 

seats, all thoughts of passing

through and through and terminals.

Outside is not the solution.

There is no courtyard

only a beige wall with careful hedges

and a shadow made of dirt 

tracing scorched geometry on concrete 

where once a gazebo grazed. Beyond the wall

is a dumpster, a construction machine,

a parking lot.

Hard water hits the husk

and I am porcelain.

The shower curtain screams

when moved. To flush 

appears to tear a hole,

shouting suction, through the night

to reach or pull whatever there is

beyond. 

A hotel: O, pattern book of vague hospitality,

of repeating sterile and sterile

repeating, of squares and stairs

and sleek machined chairs,

molded soles and well-worn carpet 

patterned never to reveal a spill.

I think they put the drier 

down the hall on a respirator

or an IV drip that is no longer

dripping and is that why you always said to 

defrib before bed? 

The shower taps out 

only hollow time. I don't

know what the effect is.

Osteoporotic jazz?

Beating again the tub wall

of ages no one is counting.

I don't know how to end things.

I never did. A twisted wreck,

though? A cardiac event 

and fourteen broken ribs?

Standing on a porcelain husk

in the Courtyard

Marriot outside Trenton

I am naked and cannot bear 

staying here, I will scrub 

and scrub until the odor of ages

one through one hundred,

the grease from all thoughts of passing,

Southwest seats.

Crunch

Did crabs evolve

with shells

because they knew how delicious

their meat was?

I simply can't resist them.

When without a hammer,

I'm often forced

to pluck

the little red bugs

from the sand

as the they scuttle by,

and pop them

into my mouth whole.

Perhaps that's why

I was born with

brass teeth.

Game?

The little pieces marched

across the board,

leaving a trail of

angry gchats in their wake.

In the end, even

the tiny Treaty of Paris

couldn't repair

the galactic shift

occurring in the heavens.

The immortal quarrels of the

invisible hands.

Everywhere

My room is adorned

with thousands

of shards of mirror.

Images bounce from

wall to wall

catching the corners

of my eyes. Everywhere

I turn, distorted

shapes leer at me.

Unfamiliar forms

begging me to remember

them as they once were.

Each morning, I search

for the exit, with jagged edges

taking nicks out of me

as I stumble through

the maze of reflections.

Stare

What must my computer think,

peering down at me every day

as I gaze glass-eyed

into its face?

Tea

Imagine a world without tea.

Why, such a world just shouldn't be!

Without tea to drink

my life sure would stink,

thank goodness the stuff grows on trees.

Luck

Each night, I get home

and empty my pocket

change onto the dresser.

I count how many

coins lie heads up

looking for an omen

of what tomorrow

will bring.

Soggy

Rain seeped underneath

my duct-tape insulation --

dripped by to say hi.

King David

The king marched off to war
and left ten concubines behind.
They weathered a different kind of
attack and survived to receive
the king again, who cloistered
them and their spent fealty
as a thanks for their service.

The River

I went to rest

my feet in the clear

blue water. But after

a while soaking

I found myself

mid-stream

being carried away

by the current.

Fridge Note

Dear,

You are out of red meat and wine.
You are no man. From the beginning
I thought you would hack me up in
a trunk. Even you know you have not
been pleased that I am human and
eat stuffing or laugh at Larry David.
You thought we were a death-match
but I do not love your brittle soul.

Petit Chou

The Ants

I don't know what the world looks like
to an ant, but maybe the ground under
the abanico tree was their field of fire.
They marched right through the red-
petaled ground, but it could have looked
like something completely different.

Echo

Keep

calling

out.

An

answer

is

coming.

Externally Oriented Ericksonian Relaxation Technique

Now that you are stressed from reading the title,
Let's begin.
This technique is helpful as a sleep exercise.

Notice 5 things you can see in your space
right now:
empty lightbulb socket
shadow grid on the ceiling
streetlights
palm tree
(Who was Erick, and who was
Erick's son?)
window planter

Notice 5 things you can hear in your space now:
a puttering moto - the Doppler effect
distant traffic - the ocean
(Are there any non-Ericksonian externally
oriented relaxation techniques?) soccer
referee's whistle
bats in the wall (Does the
supposition that orienting
oneself to the external heralds
relaxation inversely signify that
orienting to the internal
heralds anxiety?)
creaky bedframe

Notice 5 things you can feel in your space now:
(Does this then imply the outlook
for mankind, based on the stuff
we're made of, is bleak?)
the knot in my back
the sweat on my legs
(Is this what we get
the something biting me
for staring into ourselves,
a despair fixed on the looming
maw of the human soul?)

You will notice at some point that you get confused.
Just close your eyes
(If sleep is an exercise,
do I really want to do it?)
relax into the confusion
and fall asleep.

Walk

He stops along his walk, to kneel

and unfurl a line of steel thread

from his pack. Knotting the strand

around his waist, he drives a slender nail

through the stray end and into the ground.

Straightening himself, he continues on,

letting the strand tighten behind him --

the taut steel forcing him to remember

that as he walks he must stay

tethered to the path.

A Toast

Cheers to your new phone,
may it outlive its predecessors
and always have minutes.

Fair Weather

I

hate

to

see

fans

streaming

single

file

away

from

their

team

just

as

all

hope

is

lost.

What

a

time

to

abandon

someone

you

care

about.

Tener sentido sentado

To make sense seated

When names get mixed
the tongue creates
a parallel
existing world.

The tongue creates
what feels correct,
existing worlds
unseated; now

what feels correct
making no sense,
unseated now
all, all but breath.

When names get mixed
making no sense
all, all but breath
a parallel.

Biscuits

I wish I could sleep

curled up inside a biscuit, nestled

warm between the flaky folds

of dough, melting,

a pat of butter

sealed away from the winter

chill, spending each night

wrapped up in the embrace

of family.

Shrimp Preparation

Place your fingers just behind
the joint at the base of the orange
brain, and pinch and pull
the head off. Then, peel back
three translucent strips along the three
main segments in the abdomen.
Finally, with your thumbnail,
pinch the meat from the tail
and pull off the exoskeleton;
if you have peeled the strips correctly,
the entire thing comes off, taking the legs
and swimmerets with it.
                                             Next, to de-vein,
stick the tine of a fork and slide it
along where the spine would be.
Instead, out pops a string of gut.
Some of them will have a light
tautened string, while others are
rich and loose. It’s as if they had eaten
just before dying. Yes, if I were
a shrimp, I would eat all the time
to ensure that whatever ate me
would have to go to extra lengths
to make it all very civilized.

Twenty-Two Miles

Twenty-two miles is not an appropriate distance between
my current home and my childhood one. Too easily crossed,
twenty-two miles afford little conversation
about differences in weather, time, news. And yet
when I find myself looking at commuter-rail timetables,
I start to think maybe going home shouldn’t take
so much effort; maybe twenty-two miles of unknown territory,
an entire un-broached borough, means I’m quite a ways away.

In terms of net distance, I have traveled one mile per year
in the direction of the nearest civilization hub
around which my childhood life was already oriented,
anyway. You’d think I’d eked out a fairly cheap existence
that way, but no. It’s expensive, traveling elsewhere just enough
so that twenty-two miles from home seems reasonable,
that in fact you start to believe it’s possible to possess multiple homes
with the same TV weather-alert tickers and breaking news. In fact,
each night at the same instant on the same channel,
both my TV and my parents' ask if we know where our children are.

The twenty-two miles between us are fairly ugly,
as miles go, and neither destination is quite worth it.
I know nothing of the stops along the way;
whole towns are just signs I maybe use as landmarks
to report progress on journeys I generally wish
I wasn’t making. Twenty-two miles for twenty-two years,
net distance averaged by age doesn’t account for how I got here,
but it seems to be saying I can’t stay.

Sundays

On days when I'm tired,

sometimes simplicity wins

out over effort.

I am become keeper of

two women
sent from
the equator
who share
the bathroom
with its
sink its
toilet and
its tub.

I don’t complain
much except for
the blood and
clots of hair
in the drain
clogging the flow
of water with
indifference.
I don’t complain
to anyone in particular,
just the backside 

of twilight and 

the spring buds
unfurling out the 
window at dawn.

They have come great
distances to be discarded,
these things, 
this biomatter;
it seems almost wasteful.

An unusual inversion: she who owns 

this windowed stone heap called home

expects me to scrub clean filth
that is not mine; basins caked
with grime and cakes of soap and so 
I am become keeper
to the housekeeper’s granddaughter.

When I am lying in bed at night

gasping for air and even the creases
in the backs of my knees are sweaty
the only way to sleep is to arrange my
limbs upon the bedsheets such that no
one part of my body touches another
count backwards starting with dry
ice and imagine I'm in a place that's cold, cold
cold, so cold that I bundle myself into
a downy silence pierced by the radiator's
hiss reminding me that snow
falls outside.

Yellow Dust

Yellow Dust makes these runners
run with white masks over their mouths,
safe from the river's smell that covers
the track, but not from this wind blowing south.
They look like surgeons rushing to an operation
as they breathe in their own heavy release
of stress, excitement, anger, or self-satisfication -
whatever makes people run these days when nothing seems
to chase them, except for those unseen things,
which there is no mask, no cover, no amount of speed
that can shake away those feelings that cling
to, that stick to, the heart that pumps
the monotone motion of arms swinging
in rhythm with desperate feet that cramp
but still run foot over foot over cramping foot.

There is No Sheriff on the Wild Wild Web

Seek out the Web that newest wild domain,

a lawless, limitless space where you can

wage your useless battles and numb your pain.

In life your rantings branded you insane,

so to the computer you quickly ran,

seeking out the Web that newest wild domain.

At every petty thing that earned your disdain

you spout bile worldwide and using your WAN

wage your useless battles and numb your pain,

from the copper wire throne where you now reign.

Shout out to recruit more trolls to your clan,

"Seek out the Web this newest wild domain,

Where cries of 'Nazi!' are common refrain,

every joke a 'yo' mama' and each review a pan;

wage your useless battles and numb your pain."

Now survey the wreckage, see your enemies slain,

and tell me, do you feel more of a man?

Seek out the Web that newest wild domain,

wage your useless battles and numb your pain.

Armageddon

Bruce Willis, take your heroism into space.
Strip away layers of time so we see only the present
storm of metal shearing ice and fire.
Bore to the heart of all that matters and
only stop for sentiment in the minutes
before The End, when the signal
goes clear because you need to say goodbye.
Maybe I've been reading too much
of late, but that Russian guy was right
when he called you a cowboy.

Cake

Cake has always been a tricky
concept for me. Whether tasty sticky
toffee pudding, delicious delicate angel food,
gummy leaden cheesecake, or frosting glued
'twixt layers of mealy yellow dreck
that parades around without a single speck
of flavor, we call it the same -- cake.
But I would think that for the sake
of fairness we must try to differ-
entiate which types we prefer
and elevate them with some nom de guerre
to herald them as they charge with flair
across our taste buds. It'd be a shame
to make a great dessert share a name
with Little Debbie snack things, packed in
plastic, anemic, and lacking
any art. So I propose
that as a tulip, is not a daisy, is not an orchid, is not a carnation, is not a rose
we not reduce the family cake
to some sad, contrived, fake
state of same,
and instead let each member proclaim
itself freely.

Quod Erat Demonstratum

In spare hours carved from sleep
I’ve been reading up on math proofs
from old notebooks with crouched lead text
assembled in a trademark headlong march
of complex symbols and reasoning
that means I copied from the board.

Maybe copying from the board is how we learn
plagiarism. I can’t after all identify the swirling Greek
letters, skipping over un-colonized bits of English alphabet—
only desperate times could call for a positive integer j—
and I can’t after all explain in any of my own words
what follows the three-dot triangle meaning
therefore but really saying I dare you to follow.

These are lines of flawless logic, where a conclusive then
always follows if and suppose and let, and belonging
has its own symbol, and there’s a term lemma
just to signify a side-theorem I had to prove along the way,
sorry. I would drag a finger along the text to test the sensation
of proof, like braille, but lead blurs, and these are proofs
I could never reconstruct.

I never copied QED at the end of any notebook proof
because that which was to be demonstrated
wasn’t demonstrated by me. Instead
I shaded in a small black square each time
to remind myself to return.

Día de sangre

Mosquito-shadows pock the ceiling;
The walls are a warning to those that survived.

Over those mountains, other feet
Keep rhythms that make the blood flow.

Hunting

The names of people --

who emailed me only once

after I responded to their

craigslist classifieds --

litter my gchat contact list.

Sometimes I'll glance down and --

catching a name in the corner of my eye --

think of moments I shared

with them

when we lived together,

and I believe,

momentarily,

that these phantom relationships

actually occurred.

Really, who am I

to say that these memories

are any less valid

than those I can trace

more clearly?

Make

the skin fit
to electroplate
with india ink

torch then hair
to a black bulb
scalp divine
unscrew eyes
to luxury
a radish

Alone

I missed you
before you were even gone,
but after we had

parted. I
came home to silence, silence
of familiar sounds.

I wonder,
if I sit here long enough,
if I would become

part of this
terrace tableau, wind coating
me with city grit;

the spiny
aloe sprouting between my
toes; ants and insects

marshalling
themselves across my thighs, their
wobbly ranks running

rivulets;
the dragonflies lighting their
amber bodies on

my shoulders.
Even the bats would wing at
night against my cheek

then out once
more into the sky, restive
through all the darkest

hours, at dawn
tucking into a corner
of rooftop to roost.

--a good portion of this lifted from Karla K. Morton's Sailor's Delight

Challenge

Don't you dare
Me. I'll do it.

Unfulfilled

In the waning years of his life,

he fed his dog nothing

but ham and ice cream,

making up for the grandchildren

he'd never had

to pamper.

Elisabeth Malkin's Metaphor for Justice

A law enforcement experiment,
a drug-ravaged border town,
a 20-year-old police chief

fired after failing to turn up for work, 

a college criminology student, hired in October. 

Nobody would take the job.

To avoid the drug gangs warring
for control, she did not gun or uniform.
Made it clear that she would leave

higher authorities. Last week, she asked
a three-day leave to care for her son,
and there, speculation: she had been threatened.

She did not show up on Monday
when the mayor of a town near Juárez fired
her. Nobody knows where she is,

or whether there was threatened.
Gustavo de la Rosa Hickerson:
“a witness saw her safely cross a bridge

to El Paso. But with the threats
law enforcement officials face — a chief
beheaded – ”

Town officials were not alarmed:
“We’re confident that she is safe
some place. If there were a kind of situation,

we know about it. That kind of news just

flies.” And the mayor wished her the best 

in any future projects she may take on.

For the one who never sleeps but must not show her exhaustion.

The myth of the city is that of the happy accident,
The big break, the impromptu genius made possible
By the inevitable but random collision of particles
Of genius within the island’s bounded space.

She promises the rush of sighting idols in their gym clothes,
Lures her pilgrims with the manic pace and up up up
Of buildings, stocks, your fortunes too (it follows)
By the ragged edge of South Seaport and winding Village streets.

She doesn’t like to talk about her upper body
Which is unfashionably square, no sensual curves
But a grid so tight even the unruly trees appear geometric.
Admitting her marquis lights flash predictably
And the sheer number of dream-chasers washed up on her curbs
Would only disappoint the fresh-faced suitor, still eager to uncover her fabled naked grace.

On the Floor

(scrubbing the milk
(you spilled at breakfast
(twenty years ago and
still you are (You little
shit--you spilled it!)

How well to one
we do our wrongs.)

Prometheus

With bones

and fat

and meat

he brought

their ire.

With fennel

stalk he

fought to

bring back

fire.

And for his

actions

he lived

with an

ever-aching

gut.

A small

sacrifice

to free us

from a

flavorless

rut.

The Park at Noon

Empty but for the play of shadows
on metal swingsets, slides, and one of those
carousels without the horses, slightly off
kilter, now resting from its limping gait.
Ants wind their way through peels of paint the sun's
parched; one by one by instinct filing.
The concrete dais in the corner crumbles
under a solitary Christmas wreath
that dangles in April, sighing O
trailing red ribbons on the breeze. Fronds splay
the dusty underside of palms, and up
stretch a green net of gauze against the sky.
A man comes down the street, his cries the names
of fruit, as if to speak them gives him pain.

To Maslow: A Slight Amendment

We now review a theory
in the realm of psychology.
One Maslow sought to estimate
man's curiosity innate
and in form pyramidical
cast Needs all Hierarchical
the which men, if exemplary,
would satisfy successively,
transcending each category
to reach full potentiality.
However, a deficiency:
Maslow thought in 1943!
We must amend but so slightly
to account for temporality,
the advent of technology -
specifically, the T.V.

In the first level, we can see
man's physiological needs:
the need to breathe, the need for sleep,
dispose of waste, drink water, eat.
The TV can't provide these, true,
but an approximate will do:
the required info's all compiled
with Bear Grylls in Man vs. Wild.

The basic needs now being met,
man naturally thinks of next
security for his family,
of health, employ, and property,
and safety from delinquency.
Staying inside and watching TV
takes care of all these, obviously.

To fulfill Love/Belonging/Social Needs
are the sitcoms from the 50's-70's.
Providing acceptance and community,
this level is affirming emotionally.

Next, the need for respect, both internally
and recognition in the public eye.
To cultivate respect for self and humanity,
there's no better option than Judge Judy.

The Cognitive, Aesthetic, and Growth Needs
are all to be found on Sesame Street.

Subsequent to reaching the acme,
man acquires these tendencies:
Efficient Perception of Reality
(Keeping up with the Kardashians and all reality TV),
Heightened Awareness Ethically
(Dexter; Breaking Bad; Weeds),
Philosophical Sensitivity
(The Simpsons, Conan O'Brien, and House, M.D.),
Autonomous Originality
(Joss Whedon, Joss Whedon, Joss Whedon, Joss Whedon),
and Regard for Nature & Universality
(Shark Week, the other stuff on Discovery).

Having followed the entire process precisely,
man will achieve transcendence nicely.
Moreover, his needs, being met by TV,
don't require the aid of society.
Maslow's model, formerly triangulaire,
may be changed to the far more simple square:

Thus we see all man's needs, complex and pristine,
satisfied when he's sitting in front of the screen.

Challenge

Don't you dare
Me. I'll do it.

The Worm

I have a subcutaneous worm.

Not ringworm or tapeworm

or hook, round, or pinworm,

but a worm more like those things

in Dune, or in Beetlejuice,

or in Tremors with Kevin Bacon,

shrunken and released

into the desert of my back.

I feel the worm snaking

through my body, coiling

in my shoulders, or constricting

around my ribcage.

The worm leaves a tunnel of

pain and tension behind.

And as I take a few Advil,

I think to myself,

"what this really needs

is some spice melange."

Poem for April 3rd

The next night, on our journey, a scene occurred.
A more graphic pen is required to paint its
weird details. This was one of the places where the earth
was in a state: the fire begins a long way below,
burns slowly, still more slowly, creates great
hollows. And there is always danger of breaking
the crust and sinking into the fire.
Night came on, and all was gloom. By and by
I thought I saw in the distance several lights;
going farther the lights became a glare;
we emerged and stood in open space.
What an unearthly scene! The whole earth
for miles full of flickers of fire, flames
of many colors - red, gold, blue, and purple - darted up
on every hand, some forked and jagged, some javelin
straight, rising above, in places licking
the dust, then, gaining fresh energy, springing
high as the others. Coming full out of the dark
I half fancied those flames were endowed with
life: a high carnival of curious creatures let loose
for a time from their prison-house.
Clouds of smoke swept into our eyes, and the
hot stifling air choked us. After looking some
time, we moved forward. I never expected
to get through alive; but death was better
than turning back. Slowly we picked our way,
and trembled. All went well for about three
miles. Suddenly, behind, a cry - We stopped
and waited for the worst. There came dashing
into the midst a frightened horse,
it tore along, the mad creature bounded
on, went far ahead, crashing
against half-burnt trunks of trees.
All were straining after the one that had
disappeared, but we pushed on, the smoke
still blinding. Soon we entered a splendid
forest; and, coming from vivid light into
darkness, the darkness to me was blackness
indeed. As my eyes grew accustomed I could see
the white tip of my dog's tail. This faithful
friend, a black collie, with a white tail;
so I kept my eyes fixed on that little bit
of white, and felt as long as I could see
it, I was safe. If the white spot
disappeared, I knew we must be prepared.

-from Kate Marsden, On Sledge and Horseback to Outcast Siberian Lepers

The Naming of Things

It was not until I rescued a cat and named her Pidgin
that I truly began to wonder whether we all grow into the names we are given.
Though hers is an homage to the muddled languages of her tortoise-shell fur,
she can’t possibly hear the difference in spelling.

Pidge spends hours staring out the window of our studio
at the real pigeons. She does not seem to want to hurt them, but melodically coos
stories of their foibles to me when I come home. Pidge absconds with mouth-fulls
of my dinner each night. She may think I expect this of her.

I do not give away my real name lightly. My surname
betrays my heritage to listeners without my consent, which is also the core
of the name Dinah, that lack of consent, the voiceless sister whose rape
allowed the Israelites to make war with a clear conscience.

But then we are all named without consent, all names are given.
Perhaps I grew into the habit of correcting mispronunciations, of relative
quiet, of serving as a justification for the actions of my relatives.
Perhaps I know I am expected to be a very good sister.

The naming of things has always seemed a weighty task;
names are worn for so long and used so often. But this added burden
makes the responsibility unbearable, for who am I to bestow on anything
a history that must be grown into?

Rats With Wings

Their claws scrape

across the metal

box dangling

from my window.

Each morning I hear the hoots

echoing about the brick-

lined alley outside my room,

signaling an imminent landning.

They descend. And

with each talon

that rasps across the A/C vent,

I twinge, feeling the nails

across my skin.

What do they want so badly?

Will pecking their way

into my room yield

some prize?

There's nothing so great

in here to justify

such effort.

Is the ledge beneath my

Frigidaire so appealing?

Are they just antagonizing me?

Or, like so many New Yorkers,

do they have to banish someone

else, to find a place

to sleep?

Early April

Today it felt like spring in New York
for the first time this year, the sun
cutting through nascent chill to coax
all the urban stool pigeons outdoors.
Squeal after squeal blocked passage
on the crowded Chelsea sidewalks as
all the city's hibernating socialites
found each other again, not having bothered
all winter, but here we all are again
out in the open, it's been so long,
the embraces so public, the shock so
self-satisfied that MY friends would
find me here, so fortuitously visible,
no YOU look great, let's do lunch soon.
A city does not bud and bloom so charmingly
as other places, I suppose.

If there is lunch

Si hay almuerzo…
the sign reads, suddenly bored at the prospect.
We’re just a restaurant…
We serve food…maybe…
Food is really the least of it, see,
because whether or not, Si sí hay
almuerzo, si no hay almuerzo,
the important part lies in the dot
dot dot, which leads to the same thing
in any old tongue: If there is lunch…
…sex?
If not, come back tomorrow. On the side
of the wall, a friendly reminder, Don’t piss here
you pigs, this is a business! And in the streets
exemplify participatory citizenship
combine concern for the environment with voting rights.
          No botar basura, No
          votar basura, Prohibido!
          botar basura, Prohibido votar
          basura, Prohibido No botar basura
so DON’T THROW TRASH HERE MOTHERFUCKERS.
In case you had doubts, it’s also prohibited
to Not Vote For Trash,
the kind that keeps your schools overcrowded,
builds riverwalks while kids contract disease,
throws fruit basket bones while rewriting laws,
meanwhile leaving you without the ability to conjugate
a verb on paper. Oh, to be fourteen
years old, illiterate, and none
the better or worse for wear.

My Girlfriend

"My girlfriend is allergic to tomatoes,

so please, leave them off that second order."

Of course, I hate tomatoes and,

while I'm not allergic,

I don't want to eat them,

so I'll pick them off the other

dish when I get home.

See, my girlfriend's the jealous type,

she conveniently steps in whenever I'm

hit on at a party.

That's actually how we started dating.

A girl was coming on too strong

and suddenly

there was my new girlfriend,

signaling,

back off.

Recently, though, she's gotten very good

at keeping others at bay.

She's very subtle.

I keep eating the extra

meals I order for her.

And each time I see my gut

growing

in the mirror

I worry,

just maybe,

she's starting to exist.

The View From Here

I'm wishing I could jump

From 90 stories up

And still land on my feet.

Poetry Recommendation

[Tadeusz Rozewicz]
new poems

translated from the Polish by Bill Johnston

(Archipelago Books)

gateway

by Tadeusz Rozewicz

Lasciate ogni speranza

Voi ch'entrate

all hope abandon

ye who enter here

the inscription at the entrance to hell

in Dante's Divine Comedy

take heart!

beyond that gateway

there is no hell

hell has been dismantled

by theologists

and psychoanalysts

has been turned into an allegory

for reasons humanitarian

and educational

take heart!

beyond the gateway

there is more of the same

two drunken gravediggers

sit by a hole

they're drinking non-alcoholic beer

snacking on sausage

winking at us

playing soccer

with Adam's skull

beneath the cross

the hole waits

for tomorrow's deceased

the stiff is on its way

take heart!

here we will wait for the final

judgment

the pit fills with water

cigarette butts float there

take heart!

beyond the gateway

there will be no history

no goodness no poetry

and what will there be

stranger?

there will be stones

stone

upon stone

upon stone a stone

and on that stone

another

stone

[2000]

After seven months

I got a job offer today.

I say it plainly because

I cut my hair too short

In celebration.

The internet was down in the entire city today. No really, it was.

A fading as steady as a page over
twenty-six years, the word that was spoken
into you before you understood,
the incipient thing that assumed your form
and whose shape you first knew when you first took
in hand a pencil, tracing in desperate
strokes a handful of letters - they
became you - and soon growing accustomed
to grace endeared themselves to those who met
their meaning, though it slipped away from you,
the last part first on an afternoon in
a waiting room, people and their problems
lining the walls, and you at the window
mustering the remnant: every library
card, handwritten note and checkbook signed,
every schoolbook inscribed erased from muscle
and memory, so foreign to yourself you felt
you must become a patient under a
more practiced eye, to read you back into
being. And waiting, it turned out, was all
you could do. Those letters may have come
to you one day late, but by then you'd
forgotten you were trying to remember.

We're Missing

The mark on Evolution,
Or so says this woman
Discover interviewed
Last month, professor
Woman who rides
Her bike everywhere
Says we’re thinking too
Small – that is, too few.
Ignoring the role single
Celled creatures, bacteria
Amoeba and the like,
Play in the progression
Of the big species
That we care about.
She says we don’t do
It on our own, our big
chromosomes spontaneously
Mutating traits to thrive.
We devour the small
Things whole. Incorporate
Entire genomes. Clams
For example that catch
Algae in one of their bi-
Valves but don’t digest
The Green colonies,
Don’t break them down
For energy once and
Have to hunt again
Tomorrow, no, the clams
Just learned to turn
Their shells translucent
So the algae sit there
In the clam-gut forever
And photosynthesize.
Humans are born with
Millions of bacteria in
Our human-guts all
Pre-programmed to
Break down food for
Us, too. We use them
To make our energy
So our DNA never had
To figure out how
On its own. She’s not
Calling Darwin and Mendel
Straight white men,
This professor, she
Hasn’t the slightest
Idea who they fucked,
But doesn’t it seem
Fitting that these fellows
Gave the credit all
To the big beasts
And their DNA full
Of eureka mutations
To solve it all, all
There is to survival,
When in fact maybe
We just got good
At consuming things
And calling them,
Their work, our own.

Ode to the Bronx Zoo Cobra

A pharoah from an ancient world
now forced to prowl these streets alone.
You stopped at Sbarro where you curled
up to a rat and ricotta calzone.
Hear the twitters tweeting twaddle,
hear them joke and mock
your power.
Until you chase them as they waddle
down the city block
and cower.

Oh tragic beast of spring-loaded venom,
hidden 'neath your rough-scaled hood.
We fear your fangs with poison in 'em
and whimper as you slither through our hood.
Slink on down and catch the one,
stop off at Times Square,
sun yourself in neon.
Watch as all the tourists run,
and hiss at their despair,
"fly you silly peons."

For one great week you had us all
eating from the palm of your... back.
You even managed to cast a pall
over the star of Rebecca Black.
But perhaps we misjudged
your famous media romp.
After all, what do we know?
The details were fudged!
You were just a fan of STOMP
trying to catch dinner and a show.

Equivalence

I am a star—

Soon I will explode.

Gold Rush

When we brought friends along to visit Frontier Town
I remember the midway booth where they gave you sieves
for a buck and let you pan for gold was always a hit
with the other kids, but I never saw the appeal.
It just dawned on me that this motion was less novel
when one grew up with cats and chores.
It never occurred to me that sifting through muck
would turn up anything but shit, although
it did make sense that this task could be a job.
Fifteen years later and nothing's changed.
I still expect my digging to reveal only danker
truths than what's visible on the surface,
but I'm still pretty sure it's my job,
and that we're all better for it. No sense
in letting the litter box stink up the place.

Urgent

Bold CAPS Last Chance exclamation
marks assault my server and someone
hopes me too as the lighting
fast fiber-optic retina screen
flashes peek-a-boo til-it’s-gone
and on and on and
offers never seductive
cause that’s another word for
delayed gratification never
like lingerie which is full
of soft sounds that feel good
to hold in your mouth but this
is for your eyes only
and they’re bigger than your stomach
will be with these 3 rules
for eliminating belly-fat
how ghastly her belly looks
god don’t stare at it like people
probably stare at you JUST CLICK
claim yours today before they’re gone
that red countdown in the corner there
can’t be reasoned with no no
no bomb will detonate but
supplies won’t last no
we are down to the last available
stock act now be prepared plan
payments later you’ll regret passing
no still no bomb
just the morning inbox inundation.

Know what would cost less
than anxiety meds for all of us
notebooks and pens that’s what.
Takes longer to write in all caps
cause you have to print isolated
letters since no smooth cursive
barks like that, plus at least
when I bold something
you know I meant it or
why would I have traced
the words twice over
if I didn’t need your eyes
to do the same? Beauty
of the written word is
it’s all tangled up in time
like when I wrote it for
how long carefully folded
in transit how long
for you to read it how many
times (multiple now) did you
will you all that time lives
in note as it ages still.
Makes me melancholy just
to think about but in
the good way, where melancholy
is the opposite of anxious
because one means oh
the time the distance it aches
and the other is sharply
imminent. The other
could so easily pass us by
should we fail to keep
our wired vigilance to the
Technicolor urgency
of everything. I push
this pen across the page for you
in calmest sadness for you
dear are not urgent. You just
exist. The space and time between
may crackle with desire pang
momentary yearning even burn
jealous need but all these
bounce wave-like round a stoic
lord, your stasis is exquisite.