10 Things

your heart is swollen to make your breasts appear larger

and flowers have more colors, even the dying ones
and some mornings, you see him across the room
and some mornings, perfume bottles sit empty near the sink
and you drink more wine, less beer
and your hair curls on its own
and your tongue to him, “speak to me in spanish, but only the dirty things”
and all of your dresses have big blooming wild flower prints
and they sit above the knee
and then you learn to write poetry with your tongue on his skin

for sale.

if you have fifteen dollars
i can sell you a list like this one
but more beautiful,
and for twenty, i can write your name
into the title
i’ll sell you a list that isn’t like this list
at all:
the muscle ache of the clock hands
the tooth ache of the tiger
and the noise our molars make
when our jawbone shifts
the soft groan of our tongues
the bell over the door of the liquor store
the junk that collects at the backs of our throats
a cockroach bed frame
the bones of our fingers snapping together
in time with your favorite song
for fifteen or twenty, i’ll sell you a list
like this one,
but it will be yours
to keep

smear.

the only galaxies
i’ve ever seen
are the insects
smeared across
the windshield
green and black
with bug-eyed
moons catching
the streetlights
and speckled legs
caught in the motion
of freeway wind
they were quite
beautiful
and sticky
and so easy
to wash away

The way I read Poems is in tiny little spurts.
Poems on toast with half a sugared grapefruit.
A glass of orange juice, no pulp.

I read Poems in little bundles like nerve endings,
A Poem after I’ve brushed my teeth and
Pretended to floss.  These are spearmint Poems.

I’ll read a Poem between sending two emails
But never will I read a collection of Poems from beginning to the end.
They need time, Poems, to settle into my body.  And turn on a light.

I read a Poem on the train, traveling from New York
To Boston.  The woman behind me read the same Poem, too.
She didn’t tell me this.  I felt her reading it with me, over my shoulder.

At the airport I read a Poem inside a bathroom stall.
The Poem went this way, if I remember it right:
“Tina was here, she was on her knees but she wasn’t praying.”

I read a Poem each night before I fall asleep.  After I take a handful
Of pills.  Some nights the Poem keeps me awake, or it makes me
Dream vivid Poem dreams.  Last night the Poem made me sweat, swear.

I’ll read Poems in the rain walking home or
Poems in the waiting room.  Poems in subway stations that smell
Like urine (the station, not the Poem).  Poems on a plate next to tea.

Poems separated by a Classic Rock song or finger-snap.  Time between
Poems the length of a cigarette or letting the curling iron heat up. 
Time enough to allow each Poem to absorb itself entirely into my blood,

And rush quickly toward my heart.

Clorox.

I’m watching a butterfly dance drunk circles around the porch light, contemplating its markings, sipping beer with ice, chewing hang nails, waiting like a silly young thing for love to come find me, smelling the Clorox scent of the dryer vent, frowning all the while, at the butterfly.  Stupid thing, I think.  Stupid thing, you don’t know how beautiful we all think you are.  You only know nectar and bright spots of light.  Stupid mindless thing, so graceful with painted color, making us all look like bad, big dumb things down here while you drift so carelessly across the shadows the moon makes.  My beer is gone and my fingertips are bleeding.  The dryer has stopped running.  The butterfly nestles under the gutter and disappears leaving me alone again, a silly young thing, waiting for love to come find me.

seven years of twenty (27).

i suppose, by way of measurement
i have been twenty for seven years
twirling in a waving sea
of party balloons
and wilted streamers,
whiskey and bathwater and dinner wine
dead candles and wax fingertips

i suppose, by way of mathematics
i will die in three years
twisted and old in a glorious fire
of melting diamond rings
and unused ovaries,
eviction notices and rejection letters
dilated pupils and envy

i suppose, by way of nature
i will have done all of the things
that we’re meant to do in life
i was born, there was a middle
and now i’ll die
at thirty

fearophobic.

i fear extreme cold and deep water
solar flares and tight spaces,
hard water and whip lash
i feel that at any moment
i might be lifted in a hurricane
or splinter my tongue
on a popcicle stick,
terrified of sharp teeth
and stories without endings
so when you came to me
a blurry shadow on the ceiling,
from far beyond the dead
you were thinking i’d cower like a child
under mounds of blankets and prayers
and we both sat shocked
when i raised my eyes to blink at you
and welcomed you into my bed

i don’t want to cut my hair.
it tangles, weaves, splits but
i don’t want to cut my hair
it blinds and stabs at my eyes but
i don’t want to cut my hair
if i pile it up like a braided ladder
you could climb it to the moon
bring back shining hot rocks
covered in moon dust
bring back your boots, drenched in moon mud
i don’t want to cut my hair
i don’t want to cut my hair

Laughing Unaware.

She drank strawberry milk, liked the way the pink bubbles looked exploding at the end of her straw when she blew.  And when her mother told her, ‘stop that, silly bear’, she blew harder and the milk would leap from the glass and splatter tiny pink freckles across her nose and her cheeks, catch like blushed dew drops on her lashes.  Laughing with gold sunshine teeth, fake pearls from her mother’s trinket box.  Laughing with her little silver crucifix bouncing around her throat.  Laughing with baby pink bubbles like candy foam on her tongue.  Laughing unaware of the sugar, chewing at her blood. 

Seven Years

for seven years
watching you glide around
on twig legs with grace
stepping softly on clouds
of pink taffeta, lace and pearl
you drew a smile onto my lips
pulling at their corners with cord
drew laughter from my throat
with syrup and honey
for seven years

white noise.

white noise is ticking clocks on ancient walls
and buzzing traffic 6 miles north
i drove the length of six slow-smoked cigarettes
down a freeway that was one giant crater of tire marks
and city garbage fly-aways
ended up parked crooked on a road on the outskirts of tragedy
in front of tattoo parlor, next to a pub where on tuesday nights
“girls drink 4 free” and the walls are paper wood paneled
white noise is a refrigerator compressor constantly running
and the disembodied cries of a long-dead baby boy
and to run from it
i drove for as long as it takes to play his favorite album all the way through
down an interstate that was four lanes wide and dipped into a valley
paved in loose gravel dyed with coal for color
ended up right back home again
proving the earth is round and my bones are magnetically charged
white noise is light bulb filament and the mewing of kittens
train whistles and foundations settling
humming bird wings rattling, our teeth tapping together when we kiss
white noise is our hearts beating fast and our toenails growing
blossoms opening on trees and car engines overheating
i drove for the length of half a tank of gas
and then stopped behind a mini mart to dig a needle into my arm
and fall asleep in the backseat
underneath the toxic humming of an artificial moon that said,
“regular, $3.49”  that said, “diesel, $3.74”
white noise is
an electric lullaby

The Mad Scientist.

Our eyes have never locked, my own and this mad scientist I know, but I’ve created a whole world for him.  Three grown children, two boys, a girl, and a long-dead wife who had pearl teeth and silver curls around her ears.  A titanium hip plate, sunken eyes and memories of war. 

I pass him every morning while I smoke my first cigarette and he’s on his third.  Him, waiting for the train, me in my white Lincoln with the burnt leather seats.  The ice in my coffee rattles against the plastic cup, the loose change in his pocket shakes.  He’ll drop each coin into the company vending machine around three-o’clock, a Twix candy bar and a Diet Coke.  His teeth are no good.

He fiddles wires around in an air-conditioned server room, red and blue crossing over yellow.  He mumbles when he answers the phone.  His name is Steven, or Charles, but his young co-workers have deemed him Gus and he can’t shake it.  It’s the hair sticking straight up above his head like an electric shock, a little shooting out of his ears and he knows he looks like a Gus.  His mother had high hopes.

It’s frozen dinners in front of the evening news team after that.  He pushes the peas to the side, figures them still frozen in the center anyhow.  He hangs his short-sleeved button shirts on the shower rod before he’ll sleep.  The steam does enough justice.  He counts out $1.50 in quarters and packs his Kents into the top pocket of the shirt.  He sleeps with the lights on, my mad scientist does.  It’s not fear, it’s an invitation.

He’ll die alone, his children taking three days to notice the strange empty weight in their stomachs.  And I’d warn him, let him know, but we’d have to make eye contact first and at the speed of morning traffic, I’m not sure he’d catch my message.

Forget It, Just Go Back To Bed.

“Good morning to you Boston, Massachusetts! Flash flood warnings are in effect for the northern portion of your state of mind! We hope you’ll find the right tools to stay afloat until tomorrow! From News Center 5, this is your wake-up call.”

And ready or not it’s a Sunday afternoon and I’ve got myself a deadline or two that I can’t be sure if I’ve missed, a date with no one and a coupon for FroYo that expires at sundown.

If you read Boston and immediately thought of Kerouac, you’re typical. If you read Massachusetts and pictured the inside of a dim-lit bedroom with four tall walls and a splattered paint job, you’re me. Or you’re you and our versions of life are eerily similar and dismal.

At nearly 1pm I’m emptying my purse onto my unmade twin bed searching for an unused train ticket that happens to be not only unused but apparently un-purchased as I come up empty handed, headed into yet another week with no way out. I’ve got those deadlines I mentioned and nowhere to hide from them. It isn’t that publishers are banging down my door, but they sure are doing a number on the bulkhead to my subconscious.

My blackberry buzzes under a flurry of cigarette and coffee receipts and it’s another automatic-reply rejection notice from some low-grade literary joint. We’re so sorry but this thing you call a manuscript, well it just isn’t right for us, or so our computer-program sources tell us. Too many uses of the word “and”, we suppose. Good luck placing this piece elsewhere. We look forward to never hearing from you again.

I find a genius napkin among the junk on my bed. I was on that night, the night with the napkin. I remember I’d been sitting alone on a stool in a pub called The Worthen House, where it’s rumored Edgar Allan Poe penned The Raven. And so alone, with the spirit of Poe hovering somewhere over by the restrooms, I had been struck with overwhelming inspiration that I let flow onto a cocktail napkin and stuffed to the bottom of my bag before finishing one or a few more shots of tequila and taking the cobblestone streets home.

Now, as I read this wit back, aloud in the middle of those four walls that you conjured up back when I said “Massachusetts”, I recognize them as far more than genius. I’d drunkenly scrawled the combined words of Dylan and Waits, claimed it as my own and had fallen asleep that night with a false feeling of pride and woke with the nausea of it the next day. The drunken poet sleeps well. The fraud wakes alarmed and alone.

I have tentatively called myself a writer when I’ve found myself in the mixed type of company who may be either impressed with this sort of self-acclamation, or scoff at it. I like a little trouble, a mental scuffle with an opponent I’ve already sized up and come to terms with from the sidelines. However, on most quiet Sundays, as I sit in a cafe on the outskirts of Boston, I avoid trouble, avoid conversation at all, really, and watch from a swirling counter stool, as the townie naysayers create their own versions of Hell on earth.

Everything moves real simple, real slow, like a dream because that’s all it is, all it’s ever been. The buildings around me are as tall as the plans I make every night from my bed. They stand straight and hard and proud, I paint them gold and carve my name into the sides of them, until morning when erosion shakes everything just a little and the foundations of it all are beginning to crumble.

“You ain’t getting any younger, ain’t no prettier either” said one townie. And he’s right but I’d never tell him so.

I check my phone one more time, read two more rejections, and count the blocks back to bed.

I dated a girl who didn’t know what love was.  She thought it lived on her tongue and so when I asked for it, she’d kiss me hard.  Hard enough to stop my breath, pause my heart, crack orange seeds, if she tried.

I found her one night, drunk and humming sleepy songs in our bathtub.  I watched her through the space between the arch and the rusted door hinge.  She played with her hair.  She constructed beautiful rainbow mountains of soapy bubbles up around her breasts. 

That night, her hair still damp at the ends, smelling like vanilla, smooth, silk-spun skin, she lay beside me while I pretended to sleep.  She pressed her tongue, that tongue, against my salty shoulder.  I knew, in the morning, what she had meant, because she’d left a tiny bruise there, a purple star-burst swirled with red and deep, deep blue.

And I loved her, too.

underneath
of a bright
grey sky
the foxgloves
try to bloom
but wilt
instead
                   and so, in turn
                   do we.