Monday, May 28, 2018

ptsd





I try to distract myself
list kinds of flowers I like
learn to play that song
drive with the Saturday morning ragas blasting
is the mugwort drying on my dash dangerous
to dream while operating heavy machinery
park & walk through shade patch
to sun spot
another way to say
dappled


I like the back parking lots 
that secretly link all the shops
stop and lean against the sharp stucco corner of a building
finish listening to the funny song we wrote
before going into the thrift store
white skirt, doesn't hurt
squint into the intersection and laugh to myself


straighten your spine
like the stem of a flower in water
find your breath
like a friend in the crowd
I try to apply the old answers
to all my new questions
pretending they are the same as ever
but my stomach nags me



Sunday, May 27, 2018

Drawing




I just want that evil,
uncute mark
all over this
how do I make it

like the imagined doves
inside my organ-less body
I imagine a small
horned artist
in the middles
making the gesture
I need

basically like
I'm pregnant
with the mark
and possessed
by a devil






---

I love to strut a strange event
like an evil stepsister
the part about the butt bobbing

small purse leading the way
strutting in an old dress I've never worn
someone says they couldn't tell
I was an artist as a joke
because everything I have on
is old









Tuesday, May 22, 2018

Homemade Polka


-

felt depression
in the shape and weight
of a knife
as if the moment of nonsleep
was the knife
and therefore
everything was gone

-

how does time move
in your world?

how long do you feel
like you've known me?

one soft ear out the dark
it's the nighttime window
I've told you about before

the first was an octagon
staring back at me

-

jacarandas
seem a bit weak
mostly hard brown
shells like paper
nuts, unless
I missed something
while reacquainting
with that gray strain
of sad

and it's been so long
since I met that edge
but it's all of me too

-

Montclair at dusk
I remember
the faceless
lust
the unending wet
jacket on the lawn

I drive by now
and I always do
with nothing
to pull out but
time, this dark
blue-green hole
in the empty seat

-

don't look at my ass don't
look at my ass
my fault it's
my fault
for wearing this

purple petals
twisted with pink
ribbons

-

evolution nightmare
everyone has curved hand bones for
phone holders

come to
in the shape of a knife

see roadkill
a squirrel duh but
a blond dog in a plastic bag










gray today and it's all of me


-


Sunday, May 20, 2018

wise

I “go for a run”
to cry 
but I can’t  
down the driveway 
out into the wet hot air
a misty 70 degree Saturday 
my vision is not that good
plus fog and weak tears
color combos bobble
yellow irises waving like silk hankies
in front of the foreboding church
a robin sitting on the peak of a wrought iron archway 
his burnt orange velvet chest
looking down on me
how to stay immersed in my life
I can be pulled out so easily
the itsy bitsy spider


Saturday, May 12, 2018

Sluicegate

biting a cherry tomato that tastes like cum
I feel so easily how we are just part of it
ammonium, bleach, cat piss, sweat
the sporelike blossoms on the ivy
climbing our house
the repeat scents & finite combinations
of chemicals that can be made on this earth 

gray days so outnumber the gold days here
when they arrive my body rehydrates, a secret perennial
you don’t have to do anything to me
if I could be naked in my car
driving by the dogwood blossoms and Sweetbriar Mansion

I feel the heavy dresses of colonial Philadelphian women 
stuck on one side of a sluicegate
just wanting to slide in with the rest of those chemicals
slip down the Delaware
go south or go west
away from this Puritan city



Monday, May 7, 2018

AZ contd.


Hey, I Landed

the smell of the Pheonix airport bathroom is
something sexy from an early age
something like
the bath and body vanilla
of a classmate, or
the time I got food poisoning in Tuscon
with our family friends’ son
Bryson, who I loved
something sexy
from an early age about
puking boston market and
sleeping weakly in the same
air-conditioned house




Castles

how tall a mountain
could have once been
underwater?
we walk on them now
the red rocks that really
look like snoopy
and a pair of nuns

aw a blue jay,
I try
on the red it’s really blue
jays are nasty birds
my dad tells me, the world
as a sandwich
blue-silver top and
under red and
green between
layers of wow
real castles




The Women

the women
of the spice cabinet, salt and pepper
dog walking mystics
the Susans of Sedona
swarm the trails
their long braids swinging

The Susans have hyper extended
knees, buckling between
leather legs
in a good way
I want to be them
to have me and
my wolf pup’s aura
photographed each morning and
to get cac-upuncture
with saguaro spikes
and to back my car
into a spot that reads
park here
you aware and relaxed friend




Bartender

The bar is closed
at 5:30 for 15 whole minutes
the bar is just a little sliding window
how do I say we wait
but only one of us
patiently,
the sun is setting
and the bartender emerges
bandaged and
wounded in a few places
I love her, but not yet
she says she doesn’t drink the wine
because
she can barely
make it down the hill sober
I look at her chest
the gauze
does she walk?
she wears makeup
we get tastes in plastic cups

I return the next day to the window
for a beer, me and all the guys
I don’t know at the pool
drinking beer
no number of sunscreen will
shield me from the heat
of their eyeballs just dying to
connect, dying to ask me
what state I live in because the
Spanish wife of the PT doesn’t
speak enough english they
want me to say something
hearty and clear I can feel it

the bartender is the same, fragile
A mom, I learn, and meets my words
with a cooling puddle of competence

dialysis, she says, when people
complain, look at this place
the rocks, she gives me another taste




Ranch
I’m stumped by the pile
of this place, it’s called a ranch
it’s so big, it’s a long drive
from one end to the other
too big a picture to see at once
and too big a place to keep clean
my heart breaks
for the pink man
in the leg brace, but more
for the Native American
Learning Center, tucked behind
the elevators
sorry or not the man hobbles on by
the pool people
who are also pink
are angry with the ducks
for loitering around their now
steamy caesers
I admire the duck’s shiny neck
and swim with him in the pool
this big place has small flies
because of the small pieces of old crust
at the ranch, I feel the weight of the world
my dad is by the pool too
bless his heart, waiting for me
to join, but I’ve stopped at a chair
in all it’s glory, cushions boiling,
in a boat of thick, polished wicker
we’ve been referred to as
a couple twice
a couplet
it’s offered a bad taste
does no one see a dad and their grown
daughter? I wonder, just dads with sugar, he said
do we want a king bed instead is where I’ll stop
because if I don’t I’ll will that ecoli into reality, that ecoli
on the romaine lettuce from Yuma, Arizona which
dad and I have both eaten twice
what a sad place, I’ll say it
one of many homes to the most
pervasive, thinly veiled cult
called everyone
enjoying themselves
in a hoax
they don’t know that

vacation unfolds