Poetry

Is lingering by the door With a younger sister Listening to my music. Oh come into my parlor Blush and promise to come again Should I say, “My need is great,” Or “My father married a girl much younger,” Or, “I saw you in the Moka having a milkshake.” Oh why should I, old enuf…

I love to watch the butcher wipe the sharp blade on his apron stained with fresh blood. I’m going to marry him      WHAM the side of beef split open he tenderly spreads it like a woman’s legs between smeared fingers stroking the cold smoothness from his fingertips            bloody red drops on the floor spotting…

The old man wasn’t thumbing but I picked him up. He wasn’t growing a beard, just didn’t shave and his sack, Army duffle and white, bulged with all he owned. He apologized three times for the space he was taking and he hated women. Story after story he told of waitresses who said no when…

1. The bottoms of her feet were tatooed Fear on Demand. 2. I’m sucking her magic stones from Puerto Escondido. 3. The islands on my wrists were dread. You have, she groaned, to persevere. 4. She found a homemade triangular scarf and laughed a map of blood deposits. 5. A drool chain dips along her…

(For Sister Madeline DeFrees) The old man on the prison work release gang hoeing asphalt followed us to Wilkeson and those cyrillic graves, to Carbanado and that one long empty street, Voight’s Creek and then Kapowsin and our picnic in a field of mint. Wherever we went, old haunts I wanted you to see, he…

           An Interpretation of the Paintings of            Robert Rauschenberg            for Ray Kass      There is a bird in a box,      the wildlife caged                  but all around,                  the life of the painting,                              wild      wild,      painting with disordered letters,                  the ordering      the dis                  ordering,…

One of us would spot his horse, same white as his mustache, and word traveled on warm air. While he solicited orders at doors we stole pears from his cart, that battered gray board flatbed held together by luck. He was obsolete as promise. His apples felt firm green and his cherries were loaded with…

Outside the barracks of the city & the fountains of the suburbs lit up with private yellow lights, kitchens of self, bedrooms of despair, women in white slips pulling down shades, newspaper blown down airshafts like dead souls. Inside the park trees drip green in the dark, unseen lilac flows, pines zig zag, birches rear…

“You’ve got yore head up yore ass and it’s a good thing you got a cellophane navel to see where yore goin’,” says some dude by the jukebox. Many of us have learned this is not an insult. His vision is crystal clear: one part Roadrunner, two parts locker room hosanna, one part Donna in…