Tag: poetry

Murphy’s Law

30 rabies shots, my uncle got
when, after cornering a rat for fun,
and drunk, it lept and bit his bare chest.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes, they
say—what can happen, will—Which is what
my dad was thinking when he passed the pub

so aptly named on the day they sawed
through my skull. This is the perversity
of the universe. You go outside

to catch your breath and butcher’s knives wink
in every window. Miles’ trumpet intones
So What while atom bombs dream of flouting

their dormancy. The night before surgery,
I lay on the plush hotel bed, staring
at a room service form. When I was

little, I was obsessed with opulence.
I wanted filet mignon, lobster
delivered to my imagined penthouse

as I watched cartoons: a toddler bobbing
along the steel girders of a nascent
skyscraper, pianos crashing down, turning teeth

into sonatas. Sometimes you have
to confront the world’s malice like a mouse
who’s been burned too many times by spring-

loaded-cheese. I remember assuming
the hospital’s food would be suspect.
Juice with plastic peel-off top, overly-

salted soup, but, I thought: that’s only
if they don’t slice into my temporal
lobe. If they don’t accidentally

give me a lobotomy, or cut my
head clean off. I’ll be lucky to gag
on pot pie while mom scrolls WebMD.
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Two Poems

On Our Date I Forget the “Birds of Prey” Exhibit is Closed Sunday

Grace is just life
caught in the throat. Imprinted
and broken winged.
Crow hit by my Toyota, muddy.
Peace and rehab three-syllable words

when slurred. Grace of certainty
in the sun’s smallness—small enough

to set behind your hand,
yet still lift like a hand
on her waist while facing a dark nerve.

 

Her to touch, a crow
not very much a crow, wingless
who must hop from branch to branch

as crippled form of grace,
as chapel wind is pious, bows
in gospel like fletching
post-launch, inalterable flight.
Who dares claim the feathers
of such a fucked-up bird for

violence?

 

Rhetorical questions claim
power from the empty, ellipses
lit like street lamps, spacing
regular pools through dark.
Anyways you forgot
your walking boots. Leave
like the cut that gliding scissors
pass. You came into this life
like chains deliver the flightless.
Like silence delivers a stillborn grace.

 

Touchpoints

The wanting child breaks a bowl
before he loses his first tooth. Research says

 

we regress before moving forward

 

the way white tides marshal themselves

before they break. A circle

 

opens into a spiral and the trauma

 

opens into an echo. But I don’t wanna

echo. But despite the begging

 

watch the hitting segue into bars

 

and showers full of right heat. The way

washing becomes a sloughing

 

or a person becomes a lesson.

 

 

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On the Levee Once Again I Walk to Sharpen

my body to a blade. Weapon for nothing. Recall my first diet,
66 pounds, my proud refusal of a fist-sized milk carton.

My mother’s sister at 40, spooning Gerber peaches
into her mouth at the family table. Recall the game

my mother taught me when I was a teenager—
—find someone on the street who has my body—

Now without her how I will sharpen. Will be
vapor. Smoke. Furious at the world for nothing.

Rushing down the year’s dark corridor, street unspooling
every morning, tracking miles.

How I craved my mother’s judgement. Be vapor. Be smoke.
Be blade. Remember how it feels to desire

nothing, not even touch’s static. Remember why
emptiness still comforts like nothing else.

I will shrink myself down to where I don’t matter.
Thumbelina, tight and safe in a walnut shell.

Yet grief thickens everything. Even the imprint of my body.

Who’s keeping count.
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Two Poems

How It Is Now, How It Was 

as a boy panning the stream behind my house 
         for the minnows that drilled 
down the current in schools. They moved as one—
         muscular, thick, sequined—
so if I dipped down, I could nearly scoop 
         handfuls of their bounty up

to my chest like some dream of my hunter ancestors
          lost in the currents 
of my DNA. I imagine desire like this. 
          But whenever I stabbed 
my hand into that glacier water, they dispersed 
          at once, every one. And this entertained me 

until the day I did catch one, held its slim, jeweled body 
          inside my fist. The thrill 
of its tail flickering inside my palm 
          like candlelight, like a snake’s forked tongue
until I unclenched my hand to let it go and saw
          it was already gone.

Nurture

 

As souls in heaven, before inhabiting their bodies, children choose 

           their mothers. I heard my mother say this exactly twice. 

Once after we had fought in the car to cut the silent ride home. 

           And once on the phone with my aunt after my cousin shot himself 

through the mouth. I was born after a summer solstice 

           under a new moon. Rain thickened the green outside my window. 

Above my crib two portraits of angels hung.
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Graduate School

My mother was mortified when she heard:

No curtains? How do you live without curtains?

All thanks to my sister who insisted on visiting:

a plot to see what San Francisco had done to me

after half a semester. Just how many rooms

does this apartment have anyway?  “Flat,” I said.

“We say flat here. Like in Europe.” LA DI DA,

my mother sang. But no TV, Mister Fancypants?

Five roommates and not one TV—uchh. Had I

given up God, denounced the religion of things,

uprooting myself from her sane Long Island?

I just wanted to study poetry, in “a room, with

some lace and paper flowers.” Like Stevie Nicks.

I just wanted to be a Gypsy. Hadn’t she began here?

Opening for Janis? And Jimi? Writing her songs.

If Stevie had curtains, she likely tore them down.

To wear as a shawl. When my mother mailed some,

I said, “But I’d rather watch the city.” To imagine

the orange bridge stretching behind the rows

of grubby Victorians, to listen to the pigeons

on my roof cooing to orgasm each morning.

I stopped there, sensing my mother’s threshold.

No TV—did ya ever? Likely addressing my sister,

the rat. I assumed she hadn’t mentioned my neighbor,

his slow-mo strip tease in the frame of his window

every dusk—just for me. My sister blew him

a kiss when I refused to let her snap a photo.

“Even this city has limits,” I explained. My mother

threatened a TV for my birthday. “But I need to read.”

Life without commercials, canned laughter. Besides,

hadn’t this been her plan? An educated son, a man

of the world, her little boy in a room with a view?

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Watching Sermons on Facebook Live

i don’t know

 

if i’ve ever been happy

 

joy for me, a Rectory

 

built next

 

to the real thing

 

i try, i do

 

i shovel the front steps

 

i feel the proximal chill

 

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Two Poems

A Patient’s Family Asks What Do I Know

In the ICU, my friend washed another friend’s

face with the serum and cream samples

 

they hoarded from Sephora. She sloped

and shaped his eyebrows like calligraphy.

 

The nurses envied his stainless skin,

saintly, like he hadn’t made a perfect O

 

on an imaginary dick to teach me

about efficient blowjobs. When I die

 

I know my friends will be dragged

up in sequins and blush, will cut cake

 

with their contour. But I know death

has always picked my more beautiful

 

loves over me. What a lucky bastard, to burn

a candle in wild fire. To make breath

 

into moan and song. How we learned

hunger and feast from our own fabulous

 

bodies. I don’t know much of anything.

I don’t think as much as do, as much

 

as want and miss and admire. I hope

you have love letters for my friends.

 

I wouldn’t blame you. Those handsome

boys. But I’d say find another messenger

 

because when I see my boys, my girls,

I will kiss them, and perform nothing

 

else, forever, for so long we will be reborn

as trees joined at the trunks, a set of summer

 

winds over sweaty sunbathing hunks, a handful

of hard candies melted into rainbow.

 

 

Cadaver Lab

I figured it’d be months without laughter.

Understandably. On pelvic dissection day

my friend Amelia whispers I’m sorry,

 

girlfriend before starting the saw.

Another friend unknowingly holds

 

his cadaver’s hand during the biggest

incisions. Classmates I don’t even like

point out veins and nerves to spare me

 

hours of inhaling fat and fascia. Then

one group finds a penis pump and we decide

 

yes he meant it as a surprise and the boys

fist bump his cold hands. Another group

shares their cadaver’s perfect pink polish,

 

another has fresh, unwrinkled ink

across her chest. Like tiny treasures

 

for us. Of course no one donates their body

without a sense of humor. Of course the body

is a gift. We admit on dissection days

 

we all leave hungry, specifically for chicken.

I booked my calendar with hook-ups

 

as if to practice how the blood flows

while it can. One boy I brought home

had a scar down his sternum, a souvenir

 

of a heart condition. He apologized

years after the incision healed, like the scar

 

didn’t pucker like lips. I imagined the lights

baring on him, how so many lucky

hands got to press against his skin.

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God Ain’t Here & Tourniquet

 

God Ain’t Here

This house we built with its abundance

Of suffering, a hundred sealed windows.

Where do your prayers find you? No, no!

The waters keep on running in this hell &

The birds were all plucked of their tongues

As if saying to all the quiet, tongue-less birds

Who’s to save you now when your rituals

Are plunged deep into the tall, red ground?

He walked for miles down a narrow hall

With no doors. His feet grew tired. He fell

To his knees without a tongue to give voice.

Foreign body, those aren’t his hands no more.

He’s building this house. God ain’t here,

Just a procession of breathing wings

Trying to find their way out. There’s no escape.

Prayer by prayer trapped in a wooden box

& spilled over Just one more time, one more.

He’s breaking a nail into his wood, one by one.

The waters keep on running, spilling into him,

One by one. He continues to drown with his

Sealed off mouth. Not a prayer to let go of.

No. Not now. Not ever. He’s too tired

Building a home with broken glass & raw hands.

 

Tourniquet

Not quite out of the woods, he’s got a funny

Walk. Tender was the word I ought

Not to have used but I’m here with twigs

Scattered throughout my hair like a myth.

Wanted dead, I coughed up blood while

The man fucked me with a handful of Lubriderm

& a pocketful of change.

My voice sounds different with so many

Tongues locked inside of my mouth.

This isn’t about sex. This is about the tender

Crunch of each step I make moving toward

Something. But, first, more spit.

After, I zip-up my pants. How’s that for conclusive?

I have a pocketful of coins: the fruits

Of my labor. My thighs, mango puss.

See me differently. This tourniquet hurts.

Stop, you’re hurting me. There’s the clearing.

 

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Open Season

Like any good strategist, you keep an ethical

distance, stepping over milkweed and turning on

the radio. It’s hard to tell when you’re approaching—

everyone wears an orange vest over her coat.

Cooking without speaking, I feel like an actress

playing a wife—soft cheese with honey, pickled

cabbage, pale tomatoes from the roadside store.

The pond is frozen and the snow has no content.

I understand the animal only if it’s packed

in Styrofoam and thawing on the kitchen counter.

Even then, some parts are too much for me.

The bulbous head of the hydrangea hits the window.

You come in. We eat marrow and cartilage.

I wanted the snow to be like snow from television—

fat and legible. How rarely I feel I am anywhere.

I hate the animal when it looks like what it is.

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After Daddy

Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

–Genesis 2:24

Every mornin I ask Mama,
Why do your eyes look like torn

screens? I say, Mama your flies

are gettin in the house again.
I swat at my ears, then
lift the toilet lid and find clear
wings floatin, black bellies pinned in
still water. Go on and pee, she says. Don’t
need to flush ‘em first.
When Mama scoops her coffee
grounds, she buries a family alive
while coughin antennae up onto
the shelf of her molars.
Says it tickles when she bites down.
The dog snaps at the air.
Each time he catches one, we three circle up

and howl. Our songs blanket the buzz through

the afternoon and shimmy the ash in the mantle

urn. By then we’re good and exercised,
arms quivering from reachin, palms gut sticky.

Mama, is this called slap-happy?
She tells me to go wash up for dinner.
She prays: God, bless this food to
our body. Bless those who cannot be
with us today.        Amen.
I pinch a maggot outta my
pie and wonder how many get
past our lips unseen.
Every night, as she’s fallin asleep,
I lean in slow and close
and I tell my Mama,
Mama, I think we got ‘em all.

 

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