13.
Marriage
Once it’s asked in the bedroom, it burrows
between the blankets and sheets—like two bodies,
like a nightlight’s glow—it’s m a
headboard
pillowed and tall, the last consonant a growl, a
shhhh.
When I answer as you open the blue velvet box,
as you take my hand and slide it on,
I laugh, pulling you from your knees to the bed,
smelling the dust from the desert and sweat,
after having seconds to turn the word around my finger,
I repeat it, feeling the tough rumble
of the double consonant against my chest like a
cat
and that singular i stroked and softening
by the head of that well positioned r.
*
12.
Receiving the Blue Egg
…this small key belongs to the closet at the end of the long
gallery on the ground floor
…do what you like with all the rest, except this closet, this my
dear, you must not enter,
not even put the key in the lock…
In the photo you send of our last moment
my hands cup beneath gauze like pools
at the base of low falls, a misty tumble
around my neck, slipping down my shoulders
and arms, or like morning fog as it swirls
to fold a torso in pale shadows of forest,
but lift a face to drift in the humid ethers
long enough for you to give that warning.
*
11.
Finding
the Late Wives
Yet I would argue that even the (re)teller’s and critics’ moral
judgment on the heroine’s
curiosity cannot mask the fact the corpses behind the forbidden
door serve as a mute
but compelling indicator that something is dreadfully wrong with
Bluebeard and
his (sexual) relationship to women. ~Daniela Hempen
I scrubbed the stone floor for you, trying
to clean away the blood, bristled through the
dried
and crusted, rubbed viscous pools to paint
bubbling under the chemicals and friction,
because you needed them to be gone.
Even my hope of finding your heart
in that locked room could not wipe away the
evidence.
I washed the carpets and bleached the floors
to erase what you’d warned me never to see.
*
10.
Chrysalis Nights
She stumbled over from the tiny
dance floor. “I’m Mandy,” she said, youthful, decayed. “No, don’t
ask. It’s not catching. Just please buy me a drink.” Shane shifted
in the barstool, gulping, trying to find words. Flabby meant friendless,
he had always thought. Her hair was a butterscotch tangle, pinned with a
barrette that looked like a flower but was actually a scorpion. Her lips
and the scorpion were a bursting red. When they got back to his
apartment, she loved him intensely, a drenching butterscotch love, then wept.
He envisioned a new life of beautiful drenching darkness.
In the morning she was dead.
Shane tore through the rooms, screaming, punching the walls. This
sweet girl! This sweet, evil girl. Then he lumbered into the
kitchen and cooked a huge greasy breakfast. Hours passed. Night
fell. He meant to call the hospital, or the police, or at least to
dispose of the body, but the courage never came. And after a few days it
just seemed too late. So the body just sat in the living room corner,
decaying, reeking. Except, no, not exactly decaying: more like
cocooning. New flesh, stringy at first, then thicker, crustier, formed on
her face and hands. After several weeks she was just a crust-covered
thing. Shane kept the lights low and tried to absorb the stench with
deodorizer. One day he noticed some man, a neighbor, casting a suspicious
look through the window as he passed outside. By now, the cocoon had started
trembling, gurgling. Except for work at the factory, Shane stayed close
at all times.
Most days are grey pennies, he had
always thought, grey and gunk-covered like pennies you find under couch
cushions. But some are golden. Oh, some are golden like shiny gold
coins. When Mandy was reborn, emerging headfirst through the cocoon,
Shane’s fat lonely life finally seemed worthwhile. “You waited,” she
said, radiant, moth-winged. “You kept me.” They expressed their
love, violently, then slept together in the cocoon. Their lives became
like a cocoon. For weeks they never left his apartment. They fed on
the cocoon’s gluey insides. Her body was butterscotch-soft, covered with
bumps that looked like spider-shaped scars but were actual spiders.
Months
passed. Love escalated. But sometimes the suspicious neighbor
knocked on the door. Shane never answered, just held his flabby breath in
the darkness. Then one day Mandy invited the neighbor inside and pushed
him to the wall. Afterwards, licking the blood from her lips, she said
they would have to leave now. Shane didn’t argue. He had lost his
job and had no money left for rent. Forest life was dewy and harsh.
Often she spread her wings, now like a butterfly’s, and flew:
fluttering among the trees, fluttering, soaring. They fed on
centipedes. Some years are strange gold coins. Then one rainy
night, teary-eyed, drooling, she said it was time and plunged her teeth into
his neck. Shane cried out, tried to crawl away but couldn’t. Death
was like dreaming. His grey childhood flashed before him, then his grey
factory life. Why now, why? Life had just gotten golden. Then
it was true death, just blankness and light, over and over. When he
awoke, newly lean, with dragonfly wings, he burst from his cocoon and overtook
her. Her ecstasy woke the forest. Life was butterscotch. Love
was screaming gold coins.
*
9.
Arthur Penus (pronounced like 'menus')
Arthur looked up at
the building.
It was a lovely
coppery green
with ornate molding,
like a cake.
Well, a green cake,
but that
sounded unappetizing.
Yet it was green,
he couldn’t change
that.
So what was
appetizing, ornate and green?
Broccoli didn’t do it
justice,
even if it were a
“floret” of broccoli.
A famous movie
director owned the building.
If Arthur met him
there, if they had a meeting,
Arthur felt he ought
to come up with something better
than, “a lovely floret
of broccoli.”
But Arthur didn’t
write scripts,
didn’t have meetings.
A lovely floret of
broccoli, like a green
and coppery cake
he’d never eat.
*
V.
All poets wear masks
and all poetry removes
them
each pliable piece
that bends and shifts
with each new pair of lips
undresses them a bit more
a strip tease
for a scattered and unseen
audience
the revelations do not end
with bare skin
born poets
the women worthy of the
word
the women without a choice
only the compulsion
to construct memorials
of the mundane and muddy
moments
we wade through
these women
these poets
slice themselves open
with the rusty blade of
memory
and sharpened edge of
truth
transforming paper
into a priest
without asking for
forgiveness
setting her sins free
shoving the dark
out of comfortable shade
into the blinding arena of
light
her confessions are your
own
without the offering of
apology
or amends
she simply bares it all
keeping only her crumbled
bones
for herself
while you spend your time
in a tower
spinning truths into
secrets
*
7.
Hold Back Stop
Soon as I mailed it
stuck my hand in the
blue box
a greeting card
stuffed with scribbled pages
the angsty feeling
rose up
questioned what it is
I want from you
what makes me think I
can get it.
You are not a man of
letters
of telling your feelings
those doors need to be
re-keyed
damned the door jamb
tucked the icky bits
into the inner sleeve
and like most guys
you probably didn’t
tell her
till hers was closed
to you as well.
Twisted ear of key or
shoulder
no entry no she said
no, no, no, no
she didn’t want to
talk to you ever
you took a scalpel to
yourself after that
cut away pounds of
flesh
inside yourself
sawing.
Every day at work
fixing lock and latch
sliding metal against
metal
with graphite
lubricity
drill pin, cylinder
slide, hasp and staple
How can a man be so
handsome
while eating his own
guts?
takes one to know one
pick proof, flat key
steel.
You solidifying,
krypton hard body, impenetrable.
Locking dogs at the
heel and toe of the shackle.
Horizontal, to prevent
the barking of knuckles.
Oh the tumblers, and
shoulder shank, striking plates,
the keeper, and the
keep, the differ, and the follower hole.
A one sided action,
a one sided lock, a
plug pin release,
a night latch, safe
and vault.
And here I come with a
lock pick
and a tension wrench
spring steel hacksaw
blades and piano wire.
Searching for
unauthorized access
writing these stupid not
really love letters
I hang my head low
swallow crack voiced
and try
I don’t know what I’m
asking
I just want in.
*
6.
Goth Night
It’s all about black.
Black hair and black
clothes,
black boots,
black eyeliner,
black nail polish, and
black
fishnet stockings full of
holes
showing constellations
of pale white skin
exposed within the
symmetry
of artistic disarray,
and the single black glove
left abandoned on a table
surrounded by empty black
chairs,
that I kept for a souvenir
of this strange night,
folded within the confines
of my jacket pocket
like a little black
flower.
The strobe lights flash,
red to blue to pink to
red,
as the dancers sway
to the hypnotic beat,
the pounding rhythm of
some giant black heart
just beneath the surface
of the black tiled floor,
pumping black blood
into the black veins of
the night,
and they dance like it’s
black ballet,
like it’s a vampire
recital,
like it’s a kung fu
musical
set to electronic remixes
of
More Human Than Human
or Your Own Personal
Jesus,
every song thrumming with
the same bass
thrum,
thrum,
thrum,
thrum,
thrum,
thrum,
thrum,
writhe
in
slow
mo-
tion
like
black
snakes
with
new
legs
and
e-
mot-
ions,
drinking each other’s
blood
through dark, shadowy
glances
underneath swaths of dyed
black hair,
with white teeth
barely hidden behind
smirking black lips
that would rather frown
than smile.
Even the walls are black
here,
and the bottles behind the
bar
are illuminated with black
light,
a purple glow that fills
white labels with
luminescence
and only further enhances
the darkness elsewhere.
The bar itself is a black
sky
filled with tiny stars
that shimmer and flicker
almost like the real
thing,
except you can’t put your
beer
on the sky and expect
it not to fall.
One girl spins lights on
strings
as she moves like a gypsy,
and tranquilizes the minds
of her sunglass clad
friends,
no doubt so high on X
that all they see are
blurs
like figure-eight
butterflies
made of fairy dust and
neon.
Another man dances like a
mime,
lip synching words to
every song,
alternately hiding his
face
and then caressing the air
around him with hands
and arms trying to grasp
the essence of blackness
or the ghost of silence.
Someone else spikes his
hair
so that his head
reminds me of a sea urchin,
his black shirt a
billboard
that says “Your
Girlfriend,
Rated E for Everyone,”
while on the dance floor
a gay Freddy Krueger
mimics slashing through
curtains
of daylight to unleash
the blackest of rains.
This night is called
Salvation,
and next week is the
Resurrection,
because it is Easter
and blasphemy is cool,
like my friend
doing lines of cocaine
in the men’s room
and thinking he will live
forever,
asking for the car keys,
frothing at the mouth.
Later at the Café Cocoa,
the bartender asks me how
I want my coffee
and I say:
Just black, please, just
black.
*
5.
Third shift at the gas station
The streets outside
look empty
and lifeless as the
apocalypse,
buildings across the
parking lot
nothing but dark
shadows,
black eyes where their
souls
used to burn with
electric fire.
I’m the insomniac
ghost,
watching over the
dead.
The chime over the
door
seems to have lost its
voice,
so crammed full of
silence,
like socks in the
mouth
of a newborn abortion.
I want to break
something
just to hear it
crackle
and disrupt the
monotony
of nothing
breaking.
I might see a zombie
or two,
stumble inside without
words,
wander around like
they forgot
what legs were good
for,
pick up bags of
chips
like severed heads of
werewolves
and mumble things
about
god fucking a
corpse.
One stands in the
corner,
pretending to read a
magazine
he holds upside-down.
That is a
metaphor
for a memory.
No one speaks to me
because I’m not really
here,
I’ve floated away,
lost in the ocean of
apathy,
the waves carrying me
out
to the depths,
where the great white
sharks
of my own
insignificance
rip me limb from limb,
their jagged teeth the
serrated edge
of a city skyline that
grinds
my bones into dust
and fills their rigid
mouths
with blood to drown
the masses,
black eyes rolled
back
to the whites.
I check my watch
and it’s barely moved.
I’m the dead waiting
for an insomniac ghost
to stop having his
out of body
experience.
*
4.
A starless sky
is eventual, the black
yawn
of an emptiness before
dreams,
the moon a dead white
eye
that slowly closes
like a coffin lid on
the night.
An absence of wonder
suffocates the
stillness,
a black void where
wishes
go to die and prayers
fumble toward
heaven
like blind dogs
following the scent
of a ghost.
The vampires stay
inside,
drained of
romanticism,
bled like the
light
from the Milky Way,
watching re-runs,
falling out of
love
with electricity,
counting the days,
until the last
sunrise.
*
3.
How to Win at Beer Pong
Face the Nation host
undergoes bone marrow
test
expected blood turns out
to be fizzy water
child suspended for
defiance of authority
mints rare coin
to pay for birthday
party
military suicides
attract
a tiny piece of God
other deities still not
persuaded
lifelong co-ed softball
players
square off against
career little league
coaches
meet California gun
owners in
king-of-the-playground
championship
cat beats speculators
at predicting stock
market
relief package sent to
talk show host contains
survey on best strategy
to win at beer pong
*
2.
Movie Pathogen
gas leak in the strip
club
begins classic of
soft-core porn
filmmaker lays hands on
bong salesman
spiritually awakens him
to
age of conformity
record number of
shoppers
steal binoculars
search for nutria
they can eradicate
children spend hours
reciting the mantra
of cancer treatment
stolen plastic recycled
into symbol of
personality
historical figures fail
high stakes testing
of penmanship
bishops defect
to watch the film's
finale:
a mob that rapes a
jogger
*
1.
Operation : Salud
evangelists appeal for
medical Cheetos
nudge the high court
to favor crusade for
orange
opinion vacuum
swelling with media
strategy
anglers use blood worms
mud suckers and pressure
tactics
loss of consciousness
proven to decrease
health care spending
a handmade sign urges
slap on the patch
restraining bowel
function
declared a form of yoga
advocates of requiems
distracted by striped
tie
then resume executions
