The PIT

Tonight I stepped on a lobster.

A live lobster.

Like really alive.

I ruined its escape. 

It made it out of the Whole Foods bag

and was headed for Coney Island.

Its sad little claws

bound by rubber bands. 

It's a hard life on the streets

for a lobster. 

Made It

If you wait long enough,
maybe
the destination will arrive at you.

U.S. Uniform

To show off spring
colors, they've assembled
rows of white ass.
From the back, hips
jut suggestively outward,
small swatches of plastic
covered by panties
in cool greens and blues.

But these are man-hips,
boy-hips in truth,
that line the window
in their garish fluorescence.
No man would contort
himself thus for show,
and I feel dirty letting
these boys thrust for me.

I walk past late at night
and see my own face
superimposed on the bright
briefes, the manifest bulges,
and wonder what they'd like
me to buy, and who would,
from one who would twist
even plastic boys this way.

If chivalry is really dead,
then maybe I should stop minding
its fontanelle.

Cabin in the Woods

I just saw a film by Joss Whedon
Where we all got to laugh about Sweden
But the US failed too
So the old Gods renew
Their strength, thanks to Shaggy the hedon.

One Year

It never would have worked.

You hate limes. You sleep with
one sock on. You dislike modern
art and Les Fleurs du Mal and you
were only so-so on Sufjan.

You never noticed what I wore,
what perfume I put on, if my
hair fell differently. You didn't
read Invisible Cities even though
you had it for five months.

You fought dirty, always wrapping
your words in barbed wire. You
like the Harry Potter films more
than the books. You run at 4am.

Who runs at 4am?

And whenever I'd lean over, you'd spread out,
taking up every inch of warm space under
the sheets and laughing when I'd kick you
and try to take it back again.

It never would have worked.

Though once in a while, I'll find
an orphaned sock under the bed,
a freckle of you,
left behind,
and I think,

what I wouldn't give
to have tired of you.

Extinction

When my internet lags,
I feel as though someone
dropped me in the La Brea tar pits.

Maybe it was a slow connection
that killed the dinosaurs.

AA

Tall blue silhouttes
How many do you stand for?
Anonymous all.

Wasting Time

There's an undeniable
beauty
in sleeping
till noon.

But why
does it feel
so wasteful?

Golden

The leash is a formality
they do not bother anymore.
The great oaf grins blindly
on his morning walk
which often as not
is in small circles on the sidewalk.

There's a labrador on his block,
and a full poodle, even a dane once,
but the plodding, smiling one
instills no sense of grandeur in size
as the others do. He is nothing
to fear, but perhaps everything
to the well-shorn man who walks him.

This is a true Golden. His coat
does not show his age, only the
sag and squint of him, and the grin
that so clearly chants each morning
I am glad for this one more day.
Plod on, Golden, and gaurd your block
as it will gaurd your body in the earth
one day. But not today, good boy, not today.

I Try Not To

But some days
I love you

from the top of my heart.

Ode on a Just Salad Black Bowl

Today I saw one in the wild,
cradled in a stranger's hand.
My base temptation at once was riled,
the sight was near too much to stand.
And I thought to snatch it from their grasp
if only so I could briefly clasp,
that beautiful black bowl.
Because my salad loving soul
longs with every single beat,
to fill that bowl with cheese, and beets.

But in my heart I couldn’t steal,

that patron’s hard-earned bowl
for I would know how it would feel
to exist with a bowl-shaped hole
in your lunch-time routine.
For my life has quite sadly been
bereft of the bowl so black,
and my daily trips to Just Salad lack
the ecstasy of that ebon dish.
O, to have one is my dearest wish.

Ye Just Salad deities, if you are truly just

teach me how this bowl is earned
I’ll do anything that I must.
These months, each day at lunch I’ve yearned,
to take the vessel to Just Salad
and sing a tender loving ballad
to my black-bowl of kale.
And now we must ask at the end of my tale,
will it be one of pain or pleasure?
Will I ever find a bowl, that I can truly treasure?

Anonymous

Anon,
a naan,
and on and on,
na Na na Na
na Na na Na.

Maybe it's just the thick glasses talking.

Lincoln once gave a speech so great that there is no record of it.

Every short-hand in the room dropped its pencil when the president spoke for the passion of his oratory rushed through the hall and filled every chest with a plea

that no other heart be slave to another. At least not in the truly physical sense.

Lincoln did not use a teleprompter, and no one ever threatened to shoot him through one, but we know that happened anyway.

He sometimes wrote his speeches on the backs of envelopes, and then did the opposite of what one usually does with an envelope,

gave his words to a thousand people once rather than one forever. A gift of the moment, they could never re-gift, the gift of feeling and story that cannot be matched.

I too write on envelopes, and playbills, and yes, even the occasional cliched napkin when I find myself without a notebook

but somehow I always assume the notes will be read.

Maybe I will turn them into a poem later, or a letter to my lover, or my intrepid biographer will dig up this coaster from the High Line Ballroom

and glean insight about how a young artist felt about the acoustics of a cello.

When I say something clever or devise a moving argument, I post it to my blog for the world to access forever and always. That is my gift, and it feels cheap.

Speeches are on Powerpoints now, delivered in advanced on the AP wire so that we can watch in real-time closed-caption and dissect

every position a pundit has ever stated. Every mic is secretly hot, unless you fail to say anything interesting.

How many uninteresting things we write down, for all the true pith that passes our lips.

I long for epistolary revelation. I long to hear a speech so great the alphabet weeps and lays aside its vowels in refusal to capture it.

We are sentenced to 140 characters, eight second sound-bites, scrolling headlines and the speed at which the hands can type.

The ears hear more. Speak to me. Let me watch you, and listen.

Basement Things

Tell me
we've shaken it off.

Tell me it's past and that
past is a thing that is buried
in a box in the dirt under
the floorboards of a house
we never lived in.

Tell me one ghost story
that's not about us.

Javelin

It's smooth arc
was a beauty to behold.

But

He never saw the spear,
until it burst through it chest.

It has been said that death
Is evil, for the gods
Will not partake in it.

So birth damns us all.
We should create fewer
Lives, to spare the world.

The only good thing
Is to live.
To live with the living.

we walk and guess what our mother thought
--was thinking
when she was our age
--our ages

it is brisk and windy, as usual
--colder to you
so I have outfitted you in Chicago clothes
--my Californian sister

how many more mornings will be like this?
where will we walk, if not to breakfast?

I don’t know when I lost
--grew out of?
that desperation to be as good as you
--to be you

I just want to keep walking
both of us wearing my coats.

sometimes words are useless things.
they make poor buckets for what
we mean to fill them with.

and mine usually have holes in the bottom.

A Dream of Autumn

Today,
for just a moment,
I thought that it was fall.

What a lovely thought.

A Sister's Prayer

May the Lord bless you and keep you.

Good luck with the interview, little brother.

May He protect and defend you.

Whether you are hunting
or licking your wounds,
you always have a bed with me.
Follow my voice beyond the din,
out of the white noise of your stress.

May God's face shine toward you and show you favor.

You have always been the wise one,
to know even this will get better.
It is only on you not to mumble
or hide your face.
Your squint makes you look wily
in a charming way.

May He watch over you and grant you peace.

Good night, little brother. Eggs in the morning.

Trying to Find

Today I looked for an envelope
that I had misplaced on top of my dresser
some time ago.  So I began to
dig through a pile soy miscellany.

Magazines, receipts,
a ziploc bag full of coins.
Ticket stubs,
gum wrappers,
a fresh peppermint.

Fifteen to twenty
other envelopes.

Pens, deodorant,
a slightly broken comb.
Playbills,
my wristwatch,
a baseball cap.

Some particleboard,
a pile of socks,
freshly washed towels.
Shims, a rug,
the floorboards.

Aw, shit.
Now I better start looking for some nails.

Kai

For a time Kai sat in laps
and watched his father
make spreadsheets.

Now that he goes to preschool
Kai takes attendance at home.
Lines are crooked. Stakes are high.

Kai does make things harder
when we go bowling
and every dancing pin reads

Kai
Kai
Kai

Whose turn is it, Kai?
Will they make it to the lane
in time?

Run

Aching muscles,
sore feet,
crackling knees,
sandpaper lungs.

Bite marks.

Turns out,
I can't outrun a horde of zombies.

Gowanus

There once was a man from Gowanus

whose favorite dish was cow anus.

     He'd braise it in wine

     till it tasted quite fine.

That silly gourmet from Gowanus.

It's at night - when you're
just about to fall asleep - that your
unbounded brain starts to write
out your grocery list and wonder
if he is really mad at you or just trying to
make you feel guilty and, suddenly,
you know the solution to the
debt crisis in Greece and the exact
way you want to rearrange that
top-left cabinet and, wait, why
do we shape our eyebrows for
aesthetic pleasure, isn't that weird?,
and could there actually be a meaning
behind all the the seemingly random
ways we come together and fray apart and
come together and fray apart and repeat
and repeat and repeat?

Then it's morning.
And all you think is -
I have to pee.

Light

You may watch me
when I'm gone.
I wouldn't mind.

You could watch me
in my sleep now
and I'd sleep just as sound.

Put new words in my mouth
if it pleases you.
That's why I put them there too.

I think I'd like
to be made of light
and remind you, you are not.

Brining

It's a slow process

Water pressure

welling against tissue.

The salt burrows into muscle and fat,

clawing through tissues,

breaking down proteins, cell

by cell.

Pressure welling against tissue.

Saturated

Pressure welling against tissues,

forcing expansion in muscle and fat.

Breaking down,

cell

by cell

until the meat

is

changed.

Denatured

And constantly, the relentless pressure

Don't try to hold it in

Don't try to hold it in

Sitting

You sing him to sleep
pretend he is yours
kiss his head
watch him sleep
feel like crying.
It is so easy
to take him in your arms 
to pretend.

He changes every day.
He’ll soon be crawling 

away from you.
He won’t need you
to carry him around
to prop him on the wooden dresser
so he can giggle
staring at the sight of himself in the mirror.

My Hipster Temptation

when you lean like that, 

all odd angles against brick,

laughing into my hair smoky and 

liquid and low—

i want to do it over again.

i want to drive into this

until we run out of road.

Pussy cat

I came back from the pharmacy
to find 317 open tabs
open on the browser
of my open laptop.

My poor cat.
She still failed
to find kitty porn.

Super Lazy

I never wish

for super powers more

than when I'm standing

at the foot of a staircase

thinking about teleportation.

Nesting

I do not like your machinations
For my posters.
Frames are for rich people and criminals.

In the dead of night I will hang
Construction paper chains from the chandeliers
And strange Ikea lights in the windows.

I will not hide a single shelf of books.
Not even my reasonably-sized Anne Geddes collection.

The knick-knacks are bursting with charm:
The Barbra Streisand doll looks out over
A Civil War soldier girl one eye who grins
Dumbly at a poster of dogs in smart hats
That make me giggle.

You may try for "refined," but
I hate to edit the life out of things.
Here's to a happy medium
(Porcelain, peering into a paper weight on my desk).

For Tupac

When I'm gone,

don't cry for me.

Just boot up our

favorite memory.

Haircut

After you'd gone, I
sweeping up, days
later, finding dark half
moons on the floor.

Howler

The howler monkey may be
The loudest animal
In the new world

But it is not the loudest
In my apartment building.

Simple Songs

Sometimes I wish I was

a little bit taller, and

I wish I was a baller,

but then I remember,

I'm sexy and I know it.

Lot

These are the lucky numbers for the Victorian lotto—
Thirty-Six, Twenty-Four, Thirty-Eight.
Your love for me is bound
between eighteen and twenty-four inches,
running down the length of all twenty-four
of my ribs. Maybe if God or the husband or
Her Majesty—whoever rules my trunk today—
would remove the twenty-fourth, I could breathe
enough to tell you this. Give my rib some fertile lay
of earth, bury it, and let it sprout
into a third sex with perfect proportions,
a sex who’ll never sweat with wheezing dreams
of what she’s not.
We walk wasp-waisted, wrapped
in whale bone, hugged to death by another thing’s
skeleton. Women of bound feet and stretched neck,
why do we love to twist ourselves into impossible states?
As if one pause, stopping at the edge for one, deep breath,
will wake us up to where we’ve come.

I resemble the hourglass that never empties,
while estrogen slips from one bulb to the next
through the tight cervix of the waist.
Always I will be the handled bearer
of your generations, always I will seem
the impossible woman sawed-in-two
while your hands trace the outline
and your lips move with the victorious dimensions:
Thirty-Six, Twenty-Four, Thirty-Eight.
Jackpot.

The Mind [according to Montaigne]

is like a horse that has broke
from his rider, who voluntarily runs
into a much more violent career than any
horseman would put him to, and creates me
so many chimaeras and fantastic monsters,
one upon another,
without order or design, that,
the better at leisure to contemplate their strangeness
and absurdity, I have begun to commit them
to writing, hoping in time
to make it ashamed of itself.

Fingers must learn rules

If you write it screaming
you can't take it back. Retype
it, calm and reasonable.

Choose your brackets wisely
to maintain the order of operations.

Control and command do nothing
alone. Another stroke calls the action.

Unless it is all frozen,
escape may save you in a corner.

You have the power to shift, to be less
than a comma, more than a period.

The zero is twice
as large as any number.

There are four directions.
Choose wisely.

Nerves

Sometimes I get so jittery,

I worry that I will start vibrating

fast enough to just

disappear.

Stella, Tobias, and Snausage

I dont know where to stand
At parties. Too near
My companion and I finish
Every other story, start
Few of my own, too far
From her and I can't find
An opening to speak at all.
I am forever underfoot.
Lord help us if things get political.

Today I gave up.
Broke away from the two
Conversations loosely reigning
My efforts at sociability
To roll in the grass with the dogs.
I always know the right thing
To say to a dog.

For Taylor

I was drunk,
then hungover,
then I had an
iced coffee.

Now I'm okay.

Age Ain't Nothing But a Number

Hey,

watch your language,

buddy.

My inner child can hear you.

Advice for Life and also Excel for Mac

If you face a task
Where Control is giving you trouble
Try using Command.

Bang

I may become desensitized,

in my old age,

to many things that once

terrified me.

Dark nights,

now full of shadows

concealing only

laundry piles.

The hole

in my wall,

plastered over.

Middle school,

well,

finished.

But piercing noises

never seems to dull.

I fear one will be

the death of me.

The Talent

To claim no fish were harmed
in the making of a film,
producers must ensure no
single fish does three
out of water takes per day.

Would that my handlers were held
to the same requirements.
If I had a witty retort
for every time I felt out of
my depth, I’d be more fun at parties.

Illustrators favor bears for subjects
because they stand on hind legs like
humans, and are easily drawn in clothes.
Smokey couldn’t greet the public
without his pants. The Feds said so.

No government can make me wear pants
not on my own land, anyway. At least
I have that. If there is a volunteer
to draw my clothes on for me each day,
I will consent to play by bear rules.

Polar bears have it best of all: invisible
to infrared light, pelts identical to the snow.
The military tried to make armor from them,
until they realized the bears were bright white
and visible in ultraviolet anyway.

There is no part of the spectrum
in which I can hide. I am here
and each of my handlers expects
countless takes from me
and generally pants. Damn it all.

We come here
empty.

We leave
empty.

But there is something beautiful in
the barren symmetry of bones
to bones again.

Sometimes
I look forward to the lack.

Cavities

Little empty pockets

make it excruciating,

but I can't stop

eating candy.

scrawl

i feel so desperate
when i see how many
notebooks i have left
empty

Old Charlie

His latest picture might be one of Zeus,
his hair all flowing grey and eyes of steel,
searching out the woman he’d have next.
As a young man I’d soon mistake him for
a junkie lolling on my Chelsea stoop.
He won’t grin with his mouth, but embers
crackle through the haze in Manson’s eyes.

Denied parole eleven times, it’s hard
to find it shocking that today makes twelve.
Oh, I’m a dangerous man, he said,
and proved it with his shivs and contraband,
make it gruesome as you can.

The swastika etched on your brow is fading.
I watched you once, on court TV and chills
kept me awake all night. It’s what you wanted.
But Helter Skelter’s just a line from some song
about pie to us now. Your genius, too,
will fade from memory. Your eyes, I think, will stay.

The Cost of Comfort

America had

the warmest March on record;

my power bills soared.

City Prayers

Standing on a small bridge,
leaning, my face brushed by
sun, warm and soft cotton
candy rays, my fingers trailing an
old iron rail, exploring its
roughness, its divots, picking at
the paint with two fingernails
while I watch a tattered man play
a hurdy gurdy, coaxing a sweet,
aching note from its hinges as
he smiles to himself, to no one,
to nothing but the sound,
I think—
please,
please stay this way.

Granddad

Your filthy lucre
Dumpster pies
Salvaged metal
Mended handles
Cannot hide the bitterness
Does not hide your fear
Of the past you ran from
16 years old
Why are you still running?
88 in June
Are you trying to outlive them all
So you can spend one day fully satisfied
You sure showed them
Before you die?

Ice Block

I keep trying to write,

but all that ends

up on the page

is a list of Ben and Jerry's flavors.

Virginia

Children playing in the shallows with a toy boat.

Her body coming downstream, pulled away

From the stone she placed in her pocket eighteen days before. 

This was no Ophelia circled in fantastic garlands

Incapable of her own distress.  

Face down skin blue body bloated

Could Leonard even recognize her when he had to claim her at the station?

res ipsa loquitur

My mother is adamant:
I should not go to law school.

She went once.
She went and learned and argued
impassioned proofs that burned justly in her chest
inane sophistry to prove she could.

She went and learned and married
my father, who also went and learned
and they argued through a divorce and past it.

My mother does not want me
to go to law school
because afterwards, I'd likely become a lawyer.

I would argue things I agree with
and some I do not
but I will argue harder for the good, I think.

Most of all, my mother does not want me
to go to law school
because law school makes you arrogant.

To this I can only reply
with a chuckle.
I am a poet already.

Barcelona

Barcelona is the kind of city that changes you.

Makes you whole when you are not

already,

and opens eyes when you refuse to see

hard truths.  

New York makes you more who you 

already are.

Sometimes meaner,

or faster to calculate what time is

worth in dollars

then in Euros. 

Puffed mints:

out of place here.

This place:

so much left unsaid.

We speak but we don't know:

My favorite spring. Your mother's death.

How funny to only remember the body
When it hurts.

Certainty

There will be a crowd.

And you will rise

and they will clap

You will kneel

and they will fall silent

You will cry and cry

and they will cheer

You will howl

and they will howl

And you will feel them.

But you will know, above all else,

one thing.

And they,

they will wonder.

Don't say I never said anything nice about you

The sounds of the city
bleed through the walls,
settling into the room with us.

There are taxi horns freckled
across the kitchen counter,
a "fuck you, you fucking fuck!"
smashed into the fruit bowl,
a rumbling bus engine purring
from beneath the
bathroom sink,
the dull bleat of a
jackhammer
tapping against
the edge of
the couch,
in time with
the fan
of your
fingers.

There is an ugly tango to it all,
a graceless rhythm that
winds me up and makes
my nerves spark like
wires rubbed
too hard.

It takes the solid feel of
your chin tucking into the
depression of my shoulder
to remind me what
quiet feels like.

Some days
you're the only sound that makes sense.

Symbiosis

House ate Car in the middle of the night
or Car tried to take a bite of House's porch.
now if Car is removed, House will collapse.
a single violent moment altered:
House perched on Car
Bird on Rhinoceros
Plover picking Crocodile’s teeth
Shark with Remora fastened on one side.

love me, love me not

I am so delicate.

wilting in this summer heat.

my high voice breathy

I cannot shout.

prune my arms

to stay at my sides.

slender.

beautiful.

I am turning

for you, love.

turning towards you.

love. 

LSATs Ahoy

I would rather wait for a sign
But frankly I've gotten rather miserable
So something has to give

Substance

Some days, I just lie on the couch

ceaselessly eating crackers.

By evening, I'm sitting

in a pile of crumbs,

hungry.

A song of sixpence

Four and twenty blackbirds baked
Would be so into corn right now
And really dig The Dead

Sun

I've never felt that kiss of sun

that others find so refreshing,

only ever the enervating

lash of its rays.

Passed Over

The finger of God brought fifty plagues upon the land of Egypt
The hand of God brought two hundred down to the Red Sea
The word of God made mine the chosen people
The heart of God is not for us to see

For Want of a Mirror

Today, on the street,

a man grabbed his wife by the arm

and pointed at me.

For an instant,

I thought he'd mistaken me

for someone famous.

But moments later,

and still now,

I'm crushed by embarrassment.

sometimes i want to cut my hair.
but then i
thread my fingers
through the tips
and think,
you’ve seen paris.

and i don’t.

Settling is what sediments do

Settling is what sediments do.
They fall out.

After I settle,
What will I use to drudge me
Out of the slurry?

I want to fall out.
I'm bored once I land.

Newton and Stokes wrote equations
For the way things settle.
Applied force, drag force, density.

The equations are for free settling,
A single spherical particle
In an infinite fluid.

Free settling doesn’t really exist.
Hindered settling is the only
Settling with practical applications.

I think I hinder my own settling.
I am the container walls
I run into as I spin.

The Fancy Latina

Everything long and sharp -

heels
nails
lashes
brows -

dressy versions of the cute,
whorled ear, the
sugary
pink tongue.

Mending

We are taught that which we change
for the better through labor
is ours.

What of those things
we change by accident?

I can be made to buy
that which I break
but not to mend it.

No one's taught me how.

I own many things
and have built one or two
I'd trade it all
to fix things with you

Live! in the Morning

When Regis retired,

they replaced him with

a rotating cast of generic

brunette, buzz-cut co-hosts.

Different each day.

In the morning

when my glasses are smudged over

with a mist of sweat and rain,

I squint at the tiny ten inch

television propped up at the end

of my diner's counter and try to

determine that day's buzz-cut.

I think today was Demrot Mulroney,

or Dylan McDermott, or

Marmot DcDermdry...

Luckily, a timely egg sandwich

kept me from thinking on it too long.

Icarus

Did he die
On impact –
Wax-covered neck snapping
On the surface of the sea,
Or did he drown gasping
In the water now named for him,
Head low,
Eyes glassy and empty,
Unable to focus?

Once the heart stops
A brain takes six minutes to die.

L Train Delays

The MTA does not keep stats on subway suicides.

I've often wondered about the schmuck 

lying on the tracks somewhere between First Avenue and Third. 

He backs the L line up to Broadway Junction.

No trains will run in either direction due to pending police investigations.

We estimate one death by train in five to be intentional.

The other souls have left their platforms seeking mislaid idevices, umbrellas, and gym clothes.

Lookers on stay frozen in train headlights, unable to will down the brakes.

Their eyes closed tight in silent prayer knowing no one in this city is truly alone.

And no one gets to work on time.

How to Seduce a Member of the Night's Watch

Come in closer,
southern boy.
Leave the wolf outside.

Claim me to my bones,
capsize me,
catch me in your tide.

Cold winds are rising,
but we can thaw,
fire licks through snow.

Come in closer,
southern boy.
Show me something I don't know.

Map

Mrs Carter,

he did not care

he danced and then

he did not care to dance anymore

he observed:

Mrs Carter dancing

O Master of Steps who has danced so many nights that every coming night is only a variation of the steps you have left the shadows of on the dalmatian floor we stand along the edges of we still we wait we observe

do you care

to dance anymore

do you know how she

follows have you danced her steps

as well

O Mrs Carter,

he did not care to dance anymore

he observed to

I Am That Is

If painted women are whores
and drawn women weary
If women cut from stone are frigid
and porcelain ones fragile
Perhaps I shall not let another
render me at all.

Opening

There are many things I hate about spring.

Constant sweat

dribbling down my back,

pooling in damp dark semicircles

above my waist

or forming chalky silhouettes

on my sheets.

Mobs of people, out of hibernation --

this, I never understand;

are they unable to wear coats? --

streaming through crosswalks

choking off walkways.

Spring menus replacing winter,

trading roots, for berries.

Prioritizing crisp and

fresh, over flavor and depth.

Taxes.

And yet, two words

somehow manage

to redeem the season.

"Play ball."

Tending

We thought he spun it out already

formed

We thought it was thought and it

was

A breath and then

breathed

Before there was a garden

were there seeds

Before there was speech

were there sounds

Before there was the act

was there the desire

to act

Formerly Charmed Life

Stephan Jenkins

used to date

Charlize Theron.

Now,

he doesn't.

Watch

In Memory of Adrienne Rich

In his country every
the swamp breeze is stirring
third thought
in Florida the Watch does not sleep
is of death
plastic bottles crunch against your police
issued barriers       mothers wail
making your fingers itch       retreat
behind your pale eyelids
hum songs of privilege to yourself
watch       apart       click your tongue
no place for the sweet rainbow sigils of innocence
your palms exposed to yield
are the same color as your clenched fists
yet you will never have to explain
to your child
why this sort of thing happens       to us

Waragi

Overturned truck

A herd of jerrycans

While the man is being beaten

We steal gin

Lira Lira

War gin

We steal the courage

To drive away

Laughing

Without glances over shoulders

To see the mob descend

The difference between plátanos and guineos

My son, you may think, A banana is a banana. But there is a substantial difference between the two.

Plátanos are for kitchens steamy with hot oil, humid air, too many people in one friendly space.
Guineos are for gringoes.

Plátanos have many hijos. All the hijos of the plátano, even the stunted and the weak, are allowed a struggle at life.
Guineos are selected, and their sons are, too. The rest are cut down before they sap the nutrients from their parents' soil.

Wherever they can find space to put down roots and head for the sun grows the plátano.
The guineo is planted in orderly rows. These are maintained on a calendar basis.

The versatile plátano may be fried, grilled, boiled--even while green the plátano makes itself useful in soups, empanadas, chifles, patacones, bolones...
Guineos are good for milkshakes.

The plátano stays close to home.
The guineo earns a visa to visit foreign lands. But recently, the guineo caught a deadly and contagious plague; soon it will be gone from this place. Meanwhile, we are left with the
plátano, and who else wants them
but us?

Demeter

I told her I would eat a thousand nightshades to keep from waking,
that I would take nettles, fresh and stinging,
and chew until they broke to liquid.
I said I would kiss her eggplant ring.
But she sang her morning song and released the window’s shade.
She said she would take the sleep from my eyes
and there would be no winter-spring,
no delay, only early arrival,
and I shuddered.

deer you

from a recently posted Missed Connection

i deserved it and you

are as the deer

i am not st. francis

i am a no

body

i was walking my dog and a deer

came up to me i fed the deer

when someone passed by and commented

the dog does not stir and the deer

does not stir

i thought it was normal

i have the same way

with horses and most

people:

a deer wandered into my yard the other night there were three

i am not angry or vengeful

i am not jealous but

i knew

an innate talent i am not proud of perhaps

i speak to the world

i post for my

self

Communicado

Ping, I think, as the heavy blue hinge
pulls shut the wedge that has eaten
my letter. Ping, as the cat leaps
to the sound of kibble filling her bowl.

Ping, as I ask a question to my supervisor to
which I already know the answer. Ping, I am
still here. Ping, I am paying attention. Ping,
I believe I have covered my ass now.

Thank the lord I was not born a lighthouse.
I shudder to imagine the jagged wood
crashing against my shins each time I couldn’t
be bothered to make my presence known.

In the “relationship” a brand forms with
consumers, we speak of touches: this banner
ad a touch, that email another, a prime-time
touch will touch millions with a single gesture.

Ping, I think, checking in with my mother every Shabbos.
Ping, as I give my kiss goodnight.

Disembarking

You will always think
you have enough time
to exchange one more glance
with the beauty in front of you,

until she steps off your train.

since April is the cruelest month

since April is the cruelest month

the lewdest month

the rudest month

I sliced out my trout’s spine

arched his tail through his organless body

and pulled it out of his mouth

I sprung spring

listening to him sizzle

my warped half whole fish

four minutes on each side

En Yambo

La laguna sin fondo
que guarda los secretos
acalla las palabras
y oculta los hechos.

Ni aún los peces han visto
jamás buscarán los hombres:
se traga corazones
y rinde sólo armas.

Stabbed

Once, at a churrascaria,
a waiter ran me through.
An accident, he swore.

The cut seemed clean,
straight through the chest,
with nothing vital torn.

The maître d’ packed
the cut with gauze
and sent me home.

But a chicken heart
had dislodged inside –
little did we know.

For weeks, I poked
at the padded wound
willing it to heal.

But after some time
that little avian lump
became quite a comfort to feel.

Flat Affect

I'm not old enough

to be world-weary, even if, except for the few

religious ecstatics, every poet I read seems to live

in that dull grey of bathetic morning wilting

into unending night. No, not

when the apprehension of a single hair out of

place makes me want to shave the entire scalp, not when,

late evening, tuning each body part toward the lull of sleep,

still I do not do anything

but stare wide-eyed at the newly turned underside of a leaf

of a thought as my blood – so

much – throbs with such percussion I cannot tell if what

wildly shakes is me, or the bed, or the whole

earth. They say: no tears

but in things; no ideas but in

grief – yet what I read as an eternal dinner with the alcoholic cousin

and his alcoholic wife and their two sick-eyed ugly kids,

having to swallow the inescapability of avoiding the memory

of all of this, that struggle to define the precise flatness of the

soda, is rather a consuming fire

fevering up until where I turn the page

is marked by the char left behind.

How to Work for Nazis

Remember this is only temporary.

Do not count this job as your

final solution.

Use copious emoticons.

Germans have no love for wordplay

but understand the tactical value

of whimsical punctuation.

Lower expectations.

They cannot be expected to understand

the trouble with summing up Africa

in two lines. At least they fly there

without guns or gas.

Make art.

Believe that they are subsidizing it.

If you stop creating beautiful things,

signs of life on their dime,

even for a day,

you are lost.

Most importantly, make lists.

These the Germans understand.

And if ever there comes a time

when it all seems too awful,

you must have a justification

for your compliance

with these sins

handy.