Orchard Beach

(for Melissa)

We'd go every Saturday (Sitting in the car, all sticky legs
"Get off a me!")
with Ana, the neighbor who lived upstairs

The ocean breeze
crystal reflections in muddy waters

Baby oil with iodine shining slick and smooth bronzada
hot sand, ham and cheese sandwiches and sun

Salsa booming on the Bronx malecon
salt from the sound on our tongues

And the fun
of being a Bronx kid

Prayers

They called to Father God, which I rewrote as Mother Dog,
They called for signs of fire, but I barked a rough sentence for water
for these fiery bones.
They instructed the hearth maidens to scatter the oiled twigs
around the faithful friend.
In my refusal to loose the flopped ear of the dear bitch,
they misconstrued my nobility. I was hungry.
I called for corn cakes. Oh, and honey...
full of wonder when my betters rushed to serve me.
The small salver of spring water would surely contain barrels.
What can i say?
It went to my head. I was badly singed when the fire surged.
Maddened, I insisted a unicorn be brought to lick the burns,
even sketching the beast with a bit of crsip tail, dipped in ash.
Wrong culture, said the old one
Did you say Mother Dog, said the young one
I had that little moment, thinking the dog would have
simply sat by me, and never asked, and never left,
when the burning circle extended round me.

New Anger

A child's anger, it hasn't atrophied,
it hasn't been
put to good use.

Neither nor, and it hasn't been the spur
for adult anger.

Nothing washes over,
and it takes me from
sour noted child sadness of
an English country garden,
lilac bee swat,
spanner echo in the barn,
tattered porno,
third hand absence.

Someone was put to work,
got startled within the hedgerows,
never came back.

I saw something in the city fox,
sharing the listlessness of where we came from,
listless as we are now.

Pox

Delivery flat,

hair too long,

hides the scruff.

Perfected the art

of making people

speak to me

child's talk

so I can be a pox

of a visit

and visitors, pox.

I'm so wild.

Fragment

herbal in the end, erased, the
basement and the bunch
of lavender hung
upside down
and dry
we

are
heading out
on time to beat the
traffic like we can't remember
Monday's not the day to go back home but should be.

Look. The panic's gone. The mania, the joy. 10 years of feeling normal and for what?
It's late. It's February. Leap Year. Tell me if you're not ok, I dare you.

Ever

You ever want something so badly

You would kill to have it

and sometimes you think you

actually own it

(just sits in your sweater drawer)

but in the end

you’re not even sure what that thing

is that you wanted so badly

that would drive you to kill?

It’s not dementia.

It’s not hunger

or even thirst

or a quest for sleep

but it persists

needling at you

like a Reese Witherspoon

chin kneading into the

meaty part of a shoulder.

taunting and haunting

a ghost.

It's me.

For your white dress, 
I need a pink slip.

because winter has turned into summer
and spring into fall.

because it no longer crackles like fireworks
but sits soggy in the cavity of my mouth.

I'm expired milk.