Poetry

I. Frigg’s Linchpin Vinyl spinning, midnight pimping in Mick’s gin mill, my lips mining this fish fry, till my thigh minx Iris flits hips with Jimmy. His pigmy mind thinking I’m blind, thinking bilk, grinding his milt digit with Iris’s fig. I’ll chill his smirk, slit his midriff. My fist’s flying, his spit’s flinging. I’m…

We are not scaled. We do not boast horns, or quills, or wooly coats. Our skin is pliable and thin. No fangs or scales conceal our throats. Worms regrow their missing tails, though tail is all they know of limb. A cat can close her inner eye. Ants hide beneath their skeletons. But humans, scant…

Sent for by mail, a chameleon waits with the rest of the freight for a name. Our name. We risk fraud for what arrives in 8–10 weeks: a limp form, silent at first, but alive. Guaranteed it will improve, we allow for quiet, for its remove in the terrarium: haven’t we summoned nature to our…

      With each rebirth, a little more is lost. As pounds of feathers turn to flame—then ash—an ounce, at least, is bound to blow off.       Take the breast. It may appear less lushly plumed than myth has led you to expect. In this unfortunate event, permit us to apologize       on our bird’s behalf….

My father says, “Face it, you live     in a civilization of mirrors and sinks,”         invading my real room, the bathroom. I pull down an eyelid till I see the pained     pink meniscus underneath. I “O”         my mouth, poke the mascara wand at my eyelashes, not missing     by much. It’s makeup’s…

Whatever it once meant, no one remembers today. Trains run according to schedule. School is in session. No prophets, no candle-bearing crowds. The paper doesn’t mention. The public memory’s clean. The season’s all that remains: October, a liminal time before the souls rise. Once this date was inked on calendars; it guaranteed a parade. Even…

Drunk, her eyes would water and sparkle and she’d hold my jaw in her palm as though I were her child or dog, saying, Listen to me, Douglas. Don’t dare turn into one of these aging bachelor teachers. Then she’d reel off names of half a dozen doddering men in the physics and social studies…

My cousin does a wheelie in a muddied Mustang, radish red, parks askew at Quito’s, a clam bar where we drink beer, pine the days of seminary, LSD, Jimi Hendrix playing Strasbourg, the hours when all the Howes were stick-style architects, and every waterfront dry goods was built on ballast rock from Slave Coast turrets….

Just as, a stand of trees before you— you now sit turned sideways, on a trail rock, incidentally, listening to see what comes up, down, or out, if you do manage to contain your clumsy sighs, your leafy rustles—to pass the time you idly eye up one far pine to where a birch crosses it,…