Lines and lights
antagonize
each other.
Outside I hear a running leaf pronounce someone man and wife,
then run away before the explosions.
The buildings groan in death throes
and money leaks out with termites,
a deformed child with the eyes of the devil
and the mania of a spurned woman.
A line zigzags through the parking lots
a light right on it
illuminating where it has been,
leaving a shadow where it will go.
The shadow sharpens his teeth.
Memoir of a Rhinestone
The light boils and boils within me.
I grin without skin
and color gushes out.
I was born in the dark and dirt.
Everyone around me was just like me.
Everyone around me knew they were special.
And some of us held onto that belief,
and I in my green translucency was not the least of them,
until buried in a wood of polished trees I saw
a green so pure,
so somber with the weight of effort and intention-
formed like a tooth of God,
and I felt my plastic disintegrate .
My organs are organza,
my greetings chiffon.
He liked me when he saw me I think,
except he seemed to peer right through me.
Her entire point in having me
was to turn heads with me and then discard me.
Tonight they will both have what they want,
the sun having set and the blinds drawn
so the neighbors don’t exist.
It will be quiet. I know her.
It will be forgettable. I know him.
Memoir as A Dress Outgrown
For so long gone I have been a good casing
Like for a bullet hard and dreaming of skin.
I am sleek and shiny.
but no matter the forces against me
I don’t know how to give,
so when the bullet inside me
became molten,
too much material for not enough material
I knew I would be shed,
flying backward to your eyes.
I feel ineffectual,
Insubstantial,
but I know I am beautiful
the way she watches my silken shine on the floor
the way she fingers my creases.
Cheddar fire and
wood smoke lull the senses into luxury.
Barbecued hours are sweet and tangy.
Laying here your silence is meaty,
your want moist.
The house is but a beautiful carcass
you bought from a taxidermist,
covered in cherry blood and the sweat of chocolate.
Everything is warm –
the flavors, the evening,
you when you ask the question
I am designed not to hear.
The grill is breaking his fast.
Do you really need your shirt?
Diet Music
plays from the radio,
and my soul still picks daintily.
Is it afraid of getting fat?
So much that it usually eats
it has cut from its pallet.
Friends have been left in the cabinets,
community life in the
desolate freezer.
Color is calm,
though my soul still sneaks scoops
of pulsating shades at midnight.
What soul does not like a bit of electric blue
or Kelly Green
before running away with the dreams?
Perhaps my dreams,
shrinking beneath all my scrutiny,
cannot bear away
a more voluminous soul.
She is Juning at a pale farmhouse table,
a gingham table cloth singing to the rhythm of the breeze.
Sunlight sinks sonorous into her dark,
scintillating hair.
Her breath,
her summer rainbow of colors,
her cornucopia of warm feelings –
joy, ecstasy, bliss,
and their pastel coated cousin contentment,
blend in a sweet yellow hum
hovering around her.
He looks at her.
this woman of glow and pure yellow sound
and he wonders how one can contain
heat,
happiness,
music.
The clock has gone awry,
running backwards and sideways
so that 3 slides into the darkness of nine,
and then back out to the simpering light of four.
See me between the seconds,
holding myself in a ball,
my 20s leaking out of me like sweat.
A ghost of light
passes elegantly through the room
and I see him reflect off the windows
the mirrors
my polished toe nails
Pink sabers stab a volume of Ashbery
and I shake the crying alphabet out of the pages
as soon as I am done checking my email.
I have three from God, but they look lengthy.
Maybe tonight before bed. B nudges my thigh.
T and F comfort each other,
latched for dear life. N bellows,
and C tries to slip under the table
unnoticed, but I catch him.
I want to reassemble them, create an audio montage
of the aural imprint of love
because I see its notes, high and low, everywhere
Miniature Moon 