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.

growing up in fear

a black man told a black boy
that the police kill black kids
all the time
just like him

you know that, right?
no, the child said
the man told him
they do
the police kill black boys
the child looked scared
no, he shook his head
yes, they kill black boys like you
who don't listen their to their parents
and the police come
and kill them

and the white girl passed by quietly
not sure the child was old enough
for this truth

SIX

she did not pause
nor stand still.

she remained in constant motion
to make sure precise memories would not fall onto her.

Five

wonderment 

about what it would be like
to hear and feel your own

...///\\\...---___---...///\\\...
shapelessness

Four

what would you call

a hiker 

who did not go all the way thru.

cul de sac / dead end hiker?

Three

i am forward folding on my desk chair
bending at the hips to look
down at my toes
one is clothed
in a two-toned brown sock
and one is naked, nude
down to the bone.

Two

the way the sky looks at certain moments
during earlyish afternoons in late winter
makes me wish I could push through the glass
of my bedroom's window
and fly, floating. I would hover peacefully above the
already dingy accumulations of precipitation.

One

the water rose,
so did the caskets.
one by one
corpses inside coffins
floated up, through the flooded Earth

to slowly surface above ground.

"a ball of lint"

-what should my last poem be about?
-a ball of lint.
-really? what about it? oh, you put it here on my old laptop? should i write about how it looks? speculate as to what article of clothing's fibers it's from? muse on how you like how i pronounce it "lent" in my vaguely texan accent? or are we both just poemed out after a month of more or less daily poeming? is this ball of lint plopped on my keyboard the death rattle of 31 days of forced creativity? there is one ball of lint here. i wrote maybe four serviceable poems. not a bad ratio. thanks for the memories, lint.

on the conversations taking place in the other room

the other roommates have gathered around the makeshift kitchen table
as they are wont to do from time to time when mutually convenience and loneliness align,
and the conversation sounds spirited, with each chiming in animatedly on their particular
area of expertise:
we have:
-dispatches from the art world and assertions of pieces being of superlative performance
-a dissertation on the human brain and how it handles complete sensory deprivation
-stump speeches covering socioeconomic landscapes of greater St. Louis suburbs
-interjections on architecture littered with questions of where to play tennis
and I'm holed up in here too afraid to walk past to go piss because I don't have an area of expertise
and I'm sleepy for no reason and don't really feel like nodding.

two days ago poem

I’ve flossed

The second layer of curtains is hung

The day for

given

What’s left

to do

Two days left

The left

overs are 

in glass

in coldness

What’s left

in two

Left to ex

press

Oh sad 2016 DM 

today

is for

giving

praise

to be 

left

with just

these two

coffee

good

wishes

and

thanks all

round

nightlife

I spent two summers in Seattle
but they were non-consecutive,
so I didn't get pruney.
The sun set at like, 11pm -
so late that sometimes businesses would
already be closed.
It was fucking weird to go to get a sandwich
in broad daylight, only to be turned away
by a "SORRY WE'RE CLOSED" sign.

Body Watch

This is the window I'm working in

I shifted the first part back

Now I'm working on the second

Give us this day

our daily fog

give me mine by 11

Deja Vu

Baseline, old haunts,
while walking in a new place found
the same place as my early memories
bald grey trees, tiny gorge
the people walking slowly towards

a celebration!

Ah, but then, my head a
mossy topiary fell with
foam core chipped along the ground
my twiggy neck my trunk the pot
what hath my melancholy wrought!