You still don't trust seabirds must enjoy September coming back closing in on your birthday on these leaves all year watching out for the cold almost within sight
You’re taking a shower while the canned
Campbell’s broccoli cheese I conjured
from two percent and shimmering roux
just gets colder. And I’m imagining you,
wet breasts hanging--not low, you’re still
too young for them to droop like great bags
of loose dough, to spill like cream over my fingers--
rinsing your adorable nooks and crannies.
I’m a little horny in this dream. But you
evaporate. You’re steam, and the droplets
that ran down your hips just moments before
turn into jaundiced pond water, and you
turn into me--well, one me, a younger me.
I’m in the filthy tub in Wardville, Oklahoma,
Uncle J.V. and Aunt Helen’s little house
of black-eyed peas and potatoes and meat,
a placid ring of heat around my chubby
waist like a belt. I’m eleven and have boy tits
again, poking at the first real erection
I ever recognized as such, singing quietly,
“It’s a boner / leave it aloner,” a lovely tune
that never existed until that moment of spark,
would never exist after, at least not to me,
at least not until now. In the tub I remember
dinner and how Aunt Helen, the patient skeleton,
had picked worms from the just-shucked
corn with her fingernails, pinching away
their lives, eviscerating with index and thumb,
two halves of white worm plopped back
in the boiling water. I wouldn’t eat the corn
though they told me it was safe. The worms’
bodies were thrown out with the cooking
water, they said. I didn’t see any, but I left
the table quietly. Uncle J.V. was a spark
and a cigarette, Aunt Helen, I think, cried
onto my uneaten cob and the half-bodies
of worms which I knew were in there
somewhere. And I hummed as I left the table,
as I crossed the dingy kitchen tile, through
the chipped kitchen door that slid closed
and locked, down the hall and into the bathroom
where water’s already running. The curtain’s closed.
The heat and steam feel so good, wrap my face.
And you finally step out, beautiful and naked,
towel off, ask if your soup’s cold. I look your body
up and down and kiss you before walking back,
some other way, to the kitchen. I pour it into a bowl
from the saucepan, taste it from the wooden spoon.
It’s hot. Too hot. And somehow I’ve burnt
the bottom, the cream, the thick black crust stuck
to pan’s inner surface and the few little white flecks
slowly hardening on its metallic gut. You tell me
not to put it in the dishwasher. That I’ll have to scrub
this one hard. You say it won’t be easy to get all that gunk
to come off. I say nothing and hum a shapeless tune
because, in truth, you don’t need to tell me.
Because, in truth, I already know how to clean. Every time we have sex I think she’ll get pregnant
and we’ll have to go to the doctor
and rub cold jelly on her stomach and look at his
or her fingers and toes and penises—
maybe more than one—and I’ll go out and buy rocky road ice cream
to dip the pickled okra in, and she’ll bitch a lot,
saying, So you’re just gonna leave me and the baby home alone?
And I’ll say, The baby’s doesn’t even exist yet,
even though it will exist the next week
when we’ll drive far too fast
with the cop in the lead, clearing traffic and me
flipping off grandmothers in glacial hooptie boats,
and then she’ll scream
and break my fingers and accuse me of doing this
to her, whatever that is. And we’ll buy shin-high, plastic cars
that I’ll trip over and say, Fudge!
because the baby’s listening
and I wouldn’t want him or her to start cursing, would I?
And there will be yakking and shitting and squirting
and squealing bloody murders, and we’ll have to take off work for it
and I won’t have time to write
and they’ll be mortified at school
because they got my fat gene,
little shits will say they stink and should die
and tears will rust their braces
but it’s okay because he-or-she is packing
their bags for Berkeley or Yale or Tallahassee Bible College
to get torched and dropkick espresso machines and toaster ovens
just like dear old dad did
at that age and we’ll be buying cars
and dying even faster
when we’re back at the hospital to pick up a grandkid or two
then suddenly a funeral and they’re speaking about my corpse,
pausing through tears and coughing
and maybe a few laughs because they’d play some stupid
song I used to like, or they’ll tell stories,
like about that time I took them all to Disney World
and repeatedly punched the guy playing Mickey
until blood dripped out of the costume-head nose.
And they’ll forget what they were saying, straighten
their collar or tug at their skirt hems,
clear their throat and say,
I wish I’d seen this coming.
But they’ll think about going home and stripping
and having sex, their clothes twisted together on the floor
tightly as sepulchral neckties or a proper swaddle,
and they’ll spread their arms
out, wide, behind the cradle of their lover’s neck,
only thinking about what’s for dinner. Here’s to passing out on your parents’ lawn,
pants half-pulled up and loafer-tangled,
two-mile walks in the snow
even when a cab idles and hums outside,
to letting the phone ring,
to mornings spent masturbating,
to wine-stained teeth chewing
still smoky necks in bar bathrooms,
pissing in hotel planters
and forgetting to tuck it back and zip,
drop-kicking toasters
off second story dorm floors,
barely-there panties, burlesque,
to quarter note tattoos you never got
but still ink on your wrist in ballpoint,
greasy bacon cheeseburgers,
extra mayo and 3 a.m. delivery,
abusing open bars at weddings
and kissing every bridesmaid,
falling out of the shower
wrapped in the curtain
on the cold tile laughing,
to tenacious boners during speeches,
to loving yourself so much
you can’t love anyone else,
to driving drunk with one eye open,
to stubborn demi-bra clasps and fumbling
fingers, to jeans you wear
for five days straight,
to theatrical fake orgasms, getting punched,
biting your tongue while chewing
and the way fresh blood tastes,
to overstepping bounds, insults,
the Grand Canyon’s gift shop,
acting drunk when you’re not,
to green M&Ms and how
they make you horny,
to seedy bars and walking out
on tabs, to God and shaving nicks,
to lube, to overpriced hardcover books,
to unanswered questions,
to puking in your cupped hands
and wiping it on oriental area rugs,
to stealing plaster garden gnomes
and setting them on strangers’ windowsills,
peering in, pointy caps judging,
to eating too much, so much
you think you’ll die, but most of all,
to the way our hearts will heat and ache
with happiness, raise their blood-flutes
and viscera, say cheers, say salud,
say cin-cin, say we’ve only just begun. A Woman of New York City
By Underwood and Underwood. [Gina's Father, George Washington Schrader Speaks] The last time I saw her she was dressed for all numbers: Her long arms in white, her gloves, the elegant profile in repose.
Up to nothing I drew a shape
first a dot wait
call it a point
or a wee joint
that can open itself and wave
then sleep all day
like hung over
time shy lover
of change But going back circle
the smooth shaped jewel
that winds itself
till this is left
—T, you’d think sky joined sea both
asphalt & rain both swayed waves snails hung from banisters
miniscule sliming particles bulky against broad scratches of paint flakes
day of light none know
I’ve been eating my fingers lately
I’ve been eating my fingers lately,
gnawed the nails down first,
got glitter in between my teeth;
the tips have hardened like wax;
the prints have scabbed.
Your fingers look like minted fabric,
like they’ve been laid out and pressed with steam.
1.
My first memory: no wind blows from the lagoon, and the air is thick with humidity, the smell of fiberglass and creosote pilings suffuse the shell-laden yard, with a hard smell that burns the eyes and nose. My father, bearded, and his long brown hair falls to the middle of his back, as he aggressively scrapes the chalky barnacles off a red skiff that lies on a row of dusty culverts. I see the sweat pouring from his face and arms as he works the hammer and chisel in straight lines on the bottom of the upturned skiff. He wipes his forehead and calls to me; he calls my name through the early morning half light of summer. I do not respond; I have turned away from him and am looking across the marsh where birds as large as school children are filling up the dark branches of an enormous cypress tree.
Clearing a Rockslide on Mather Pass
It’s the sound: the speed of it, the rattle and
reflection of it as it shimmers between quartz
and silica. The sound sliding into unseen seams
My swimsuit slowly climbs up my clenched cheeks
as the boat slicks across the pulsing froth
through the pass from St. Andrew’s Bay to the Gulf of Mexico,
one mile, to the swimming spot
where I stand perched on the hull’s edge
wondering how the hammerhead
only got one testicle
I’m tired of how thick-cut pomegranate
makes me think of your spread legs.
I love the hell out of you, reader, and I wish my publications were only printed
From inside the womb, I hear them cooing
over me, who’s yet to be born still,
Passing Down the Rainy Streets
Passing down the rainy streets, empty computers hum
or what I mean to say is that "I"
(some collection of neurons
in a bag of blood and bones)
pass down along the street, which is to say "amble" or rather "wander"
or maybe "trudge" fits better with this ache in my legs as they slap through these
puddles,
wetting my shins.
City in the Park
A bagpiper plays
Amazing Grace.
Pigeons ride wooden benches.
Street church in a downtown park.
Quiet, uncertain,
people stand and sing.
Blood Count
Ah, Franz! How does one
become without truly realizing
it, a man made out of words
and images? One day, you know
it, you accept it, you even
celebrate with a strange smile
this certitude.
Out of nowhere, a voice-
The lovely ghost
Had been watching me
Scolding me, gently
the tooth-fairy will revise your poetry
First draw the tooth-fairy in;
small stones of wet sugar should do fine.