Has your memory ever been
an unfenced county? A bend
in the road? I was down on one knee
forging a bond
with an unlucky leprechaun. I said Bring the Eden
of first love here! Suddenly, my neck
was leeched with hickeys. The keen
finger of a ghost clacked down my backbone
& I was lost in the district of need.
I’d known the way home once,
but now the past had its own area code.

bowling

bowling

“He got home late & ling-
ered in the kitchen & when I heard his wing-
tips shuffling down the hall, I imagined a lion
entering the bedroom. I lit a candle & began to glow.
I was in the same fire-pink gown
I wore on our wedding night. The one I won playing bingo.
I said, Let’s not talk about those glib
pins at the edge of a lane & stretched as his long
fold-out fingers approached. But when he asked me to blow
on his chicken noodle soup to cool it down, my sweat began to boil!
Yes, I threw the soup on him, Your Honor. Then I threw the bowl.”

breathe

breathe

When my great-great-grandfather Caesar plops out of the ether
in the middle of my Saturday evening bath,
I gasp not because I hate
seeing naked old phantoms, but because he begins to heat
the water way beyond a degree I can bear!
(If you are 135, give or take a decade, you have no business visiting earth.)
And what an effort to convince him to beat
it! He soaps a corner of the cage around his heart
& with an expression promising, but distant as a mail-in rebate,
tells me he only intends to stay here
until he can find a room to rent at an affordable rate.

careless

careless

Dear Self, yesterday after class
I saw a man who was a slightly used, large scale
version of you. I watched him ease
the city bus through an acre
of traffic on the south side. He said to a crass
young boy who apparently thought recess
was a full-time job: “Son. Son, please cease
propping your feet on my seats.” Wasn’t your daddy’s real
name Butch? Look, maybe you don’t care,
but this dude even had the same facial scar
as you. It was your father. Couldn’t have been anyone else.

corporal

corporal

Best known in youth for its punishments, its poor
Grasps at pleasure. As in fantasies of dates where chocolate & cola
Do not later overrun the face with a crop
Of pimples. It is the simple, but loco
Motives. As in creeping through evening snow to croon a carol
At a girl’s window. It is not singing, but a roar
That does not cease. The stench of imitation Polo
Cologne on the breeze. It is shoveling coal
Into the heart’s mindless furnace. The lack of cool.
The skin’s burning color.
The skull’s charred parlor.

example

example