Pregnant

Rumble fish twist
and you're pregnant.

Strawberry chocolate Ice -
cream watermelon,
cigarettes.
Punching holes in the
cardboard wall at night,
I'd rather wait 'till morning
to hate you.

You can't have coffee,
you can't have alcohol,
you can't Spanish step,
what kind of mother are you?
Yet, Lucky Strike before
corrected smoky blend, after sex,
(what kind of mother are you?)

Rumble fish twist
and you're pregnant,
where good things might

Surgery Central

In surgery central
is a table – its
surface plastified
plywood – I have a
patient there.
Its name: three
thousand words, the
illness – can't speak of.
Anaemic starved narrow
like these lines of sort – but
this, chance;
that, my patient;
both, my doing.

My Kitchen

The most fragile of
kitchen utensils in
my array is
the scalpel, the body
attached quivers as
if a seraph was
disapprovingly glaring
from up above.

My hand, it smells of
cheap starlet lips and
croquet burns and
the tendon, strained
by living under. My
hand envies the
flashy, smothering
heat of the electric stove,
as it can be switched at will.
The scalpel can switch too,
not quite the same.

She is the scalpel. The
mother, the aunt, the
sister, the friend, the refuse
the tired, the starlet
and the lipstick, the
hand and the tendon,
the scalpel.

Dreary, Linda

crawls to the mouth of her
bathtub, listless, demand
stay where you are
gently, useless
all hidden things not
hers;
demanding, listless.

Two words festoon
the same cornersteps,
mostly painless.
A weight, stars to be
hold, breathless
crawls to the deep end of her
bathtub, coarse hair;
not mine.

You cannot ingratiate
marble, sparkless,
a monument to your day
useless, demanding.
In a sense a joy to behold
sparse, tasteless
washed in the froth of
your day;
listless.

You Do Not Need It

To you, who have chosen to
be an angel of nothing from now on,
I ask: get off the higher ground
and swallow down the need to fly
off the walls of Billings Senior High.

You do not need it.
Much easier to shrink down 'till
a current has more will than you
do, on your best day.
Begin by denying who you are,
continue by dodging the
strength that begs you to be,
end by scratching your head against
that wall you wanted so
badly to see pass you by.

It has seen millions like you, it will
see more millions like you, millions
upon millions, moonlight in shape of
bodies just like you.
Falling sons and daughters
I consent to your demise,
repealing all my
loving care for you;
You do not need it.

Anyway, June

If we could have back that
June that was ours years ago,
icicles to mouth, white yellow
parasols and those pretty ones
by the wash, minding
my business, or so I hoped.
I am tired of
“no exposure to sunlight
from 9 am to 8 pm”
I am tired of stretches
- pathetic sandhills, skysucking
weeds even more pathetic.
Give me back a June to live,
August had its share and
all other months are gone
anyway.

When You Disconnect

When you disconnect:
in the pillow morning, at
night, in the blotting
sunlight – you practice
a strangle strategy that
is a survival strategy
as well.

You are internet,
sconnected, your body is
growing problematic
yet your problem no longer.
Re-sconnected, it's yours
again.

The constraints,
3000 words
2 – hour runtime
do not concern you
do not feed synapses
do not do.

Out there, in the novel warmth
your body is crimson coral,
your heart is the world's clam.