no one ever asked you
how does it feel to be submerged
in the affection of an ordinary poet
ignoring the frigid wind, word’s breath draws fervor
your bubbles rising in the water are her answers
You poisoned sad with stoning veins,
I dream of you in morning street
With angry hair, with open teeth
And drinking meat in concrete shade.
until cops came with their shining blue
light and
we ran
into the backyard shadows--
his days no better,
the sunlight reflected off his reflecting skin,
blinding his eyes,
causing him to stumble
into stained-skinned strangers,
You're in Brooklyn, a place of cruelty
in your youth, a place of probity
in your dotage. You sit on a bench
vacated by Jamaican nannies
under which portly pigeons nuzzle
just an ostrich or a penguin
riding on a wing and a prayer,
wishing like Tinkerbell and pumping
to get the hell off the ground
and out of civilization’s gnarly way
A healer leans over a sleeping dragon
lays on hands large and webbed as frog’s paws,
arms turn into oily black eels.
We are tired of buildings.
and you can believe in god or
you can not believe
and in the end you die
and do you want an apology?
And so we burn, we drown,
we wave goodbye, eyes fixed
on stars and alligators,
on the last page of Hemingway,
on a swamp that teems
I look out the window at an old Victorian
hands trembling on the wheel
my daughter places her hand over mine
"You can tell me anything"
Wisdom presumably learned
from the stabbing death
of Kitty Genovese in 1964
and the neighbors who watched,
each waiting for the other to act.
When he's fed up with being invisible
and doesn’t want to be a vintage pic
he walks to the beach, plants feet in the sand
next to a tropical grape tree and waits.
is what I meant when I said that sometimes
no matter where you are or who you are
with it seems you would be perfectly happy
on a world with one island surrounded by a big
purple ocean filled with really nice apartments.
“that george bush looks the same now don’t he?”
“same as he did when he was a kid. you know it’s him.”
“he’s a good old boy ain’t he?”
“better than the muslim we got now.”
I grew a bruise that purpled
into a tiny apocalypse
which I kept in my shirt pocket
and started going to fancy cocktail parties
Because of either infinity or
invisibility — the translation
is unclear — there's been a lot
of jelly crystals downloaded
recently around the world,
This started the apprehension, that a crafty
The Dr. irrigated Jule’s nose with ice water
and timid policy was getting rid of
and a syringe. She was panicky and screamed and
Because with every because
with every because
with every because
I felt the shame of it, the fault of it
You are a painting by Thomas Hart Benton with luxurious black hair and beautiful pale white skin
Someone in a white coat spots your dick,
so the world thinks you're gendered male,
which leads to you dressed in blue
and ends in a bang on a Baghdad street
that you don't hear before it hits you,
and create something mystical out of this mud
Dude says, “somebody just shot me in the head!
I can’t pay attention to that! YOU pay attention to that!”
So I crawl 150 feet to the next gas station
The last time I heard the word redemption was from a guy who then dropped a Springsteen impression in the Best Buy parking lot. Beyond, goldenrod, high tension wires. Vistas are temporarily unavailable.
We wanted to fire live ammunition.
We paid attention to the warning sighs,
the subliminal hisses in the midst
of concertos—indicators that some
of the electrodes had come loose again.
We have ceased to be
Ourselves
We go on being beings
Not selves or wholes
Wholes with holes in them
Turn up the voltage
and burn out the light bulbs.
Step off the pedestal
and conform to nothing.
He can, of course, murder his enemy’s
Children in their sleep, re-educate
Entire societies, round up all the passable
Women in a village to create a forced labor brothel.
He has an app that flounders me in dopples, in gangers. Hello! I do not wish to linger. I dream of revenge that rankles, of gongs bonging when the time is up. I have heard that you can download the app.
Whereas good mannerly pensive prehensile Pence
him go dog-diggety nosing up unpoliced spreads
of othern’s privates downward through dives
divoting him roughs whilst lowering the rank
receding arrears panic
when disruptions concealed
their lost awe
to abdominal radar
There was an America
of red brick with limestone trim.
It was small, overcrowded,
and stood, in upper New York Bay,
at the edge of that other vast America.
In this Paris neighborhood
I read a book on The Resistance
to strengthen my poor French.
As I close the book the sun starts to set
Beneath soft skies and damp wrapped mountains
old men now bundled in earth against this cold
are fading memories of their war
like sepia photographs lost in attics
Unlikely Stories turned 20 years old on July 1, 2018. The 20th Anniversary Issue was released on July 4, 2018 and included more than a hundred authors and artists.
The season of leaving arrives and we forge makeshift vows and conjure ceremonies out of smoke and flowers in a tiny cabin. Why, always, this shack stacked with dead wood upon dead wood?
To set the process in motion I decide, arbitrarily, to use the three lines on page 62 as a post-snippet. Then, I begin at the bottom of page 61 and, working my way up to the title, arrive at the following poem:
Which is why I’ve kept my secret cold. Blank. Unforgiving. When I’m out walking it calls to me. Sounding high and strained. As if a string instrument gone out of tune. Something to reach toward. Frayed yet determined. It eats to my bone working its way beyond.
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