Poetry

So the question becomes—no offense— are men wolves or are men slop? Because my heart is definitely a pig. Each boy sings like a halfwit alone in a barn: Little pig heart, little pig heart, let me in. Oh yes, those farm boys let loose to form cities have a way with words. My whiskered…

Distance, detachment, then, like lenses clicking together at last in alignment, the socketing, sprocketing, then always, like flame in a cave, sympathy first, then perhaps fear, perhaps for no reason something like rage but always this desire to parse, scan, solve, these sensitive bits of cosmos streaming towards me like filings to magnets, one then…

When something irks you, let your anger build— Don’t spend it in a temporary snit. Don’t leave your smallest passion unfulfilled. “Let bygones be bygones,” say the weak-willed. Ha! Watch where a bygone goes, and bottle it. Appreciate your anger. Let it build Vast caves of vintage rage, best when chilled. Invest in every wrong…

Last summer the Better Boys bloomed, tiny saffron flowers going off like slow Chinese rockets, and set their pinhead fruits. I’d ordered a pint of ladybugs from Burpee’s catalogue and scattered their crimson clock-backs through the furry, pungent leaves. I sat in my resin chair, observing the light of late afternoons move through rinsed branches….

The man had cornered a great deal of money and when it got Hot he went—could go—where it was cool. As for The servants, well, tant pis. A.C. was not yet part Of the picture. But an icehouse. There you had it. The butler’s Gopher boy and an upstairs maid called Sophie (whose Lonely duties…

Sleeping in your Harlem apartment, I lie on the bed by the window to the airshaft, a dark flume cutting the center of the building, a pigeon’s alley from basement to roof. My head on the sill, I stretch my hands out. You’re in the next room at the upright, winning a young composer’s prize….

The fuzz knows the whiz and vice versa. This leads to cooperation. Your average dick is on the shake. A little jack will make him right. Count on a C-note per man per day; if there’s no bad beefs, you’re okay. Once you’ve fixed the bull, even when a mark blows, he’ll give you a…

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…