Poetry

John T. Allen, you had only $3.25. But now you are somewhere rubbing your arm, putting alcohol on that cracked cheek, now redder than when you went out into the cold. Somewhere you are opening the window to let that Melbourne Avenue light embrace you—but you know, I never did touch you. Remember? I had…

Call it stuffing: raisins coated with flour, nuts, fruit. Or call it conspiracy, the seeds of revolt. The cake is just a carrier, a cloak. The secret, buried inside, takes root and when the time comes, holds good women together. For the elders— baked-in paper, scribbled with a place and time to banish Moguls from…

The mockingbirds, that pair, arrive, one, and the other; glossily perch, respond, respond, branch to branch. One stops, and flies. The other flies. Arrives, dips, in a blur of wings, lights, is joined. Sings. Sings. Actually, there are birds galore: bowlegged blackbirds brassy as crows; elegant ibises with inelegant cows; hummingbirds' stutter on air; tilted…

A rainbow, where it ends a red MG, Texas plates, a friend's white empty kitchen. Out the window a blond stick stretches blue legs against a red barn door. I can't see sweat, but her face is red, hair flaxen, chopped blunt as if a mixing bowl guided the scissor. Conversation? Call it awkward. She…

I can't imagine life cradled between give and take, fear and desire. Will no skeleton hands tug from one side or the other? I pace your garden and pigeons scatter though one remains, his tongue fastened like wire to seed. Pure animal greed— he's consumed by it, lost judgment. Will I too hunger in your…

In this summer month, two separate men were lost in the local woods. Can woods be local? Is there more than one wood? It is unlikely. Though there are two kinds of woods, visible, and not. The first man was feeble-minded. Left his goodwill party, saw something, heard something, went to it. They found his…

Right over left, left over right, Mama disciplines braids. The Hair Rep melting on her fingers irrigates my corn rows. She sings don't let this harvest pass you by. I struggle to stay a child but I hear her. I'm between her knees and see myself as Papa's overalls coming through the wringer Jewish flat…

Her face is deep mahogany, shined with min oil, a mirror that sucks my face into its shadows, peat absorbing rain. I puff the jeweled pipe, blow smoke directly into her spider-lined lips. I exhale. She inhales, tucks her shoulder under mine. A beaded curtain divides our room, the gentlest type of boundary. We shuffle…

clearing the sidewalk, sweeping a path through the rubble, I found some trash I had to kick off the curbstones. under the wheels of trucks someone took a tumble. a shoppingbag lady watched and began to mutter, but I couldn't hear her, couldn't make out the yammer the crackle of paper dogs in the nutshell…