ALL RESPONSES |
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It’s your turn.
Stimulate me.
Hook the jumper cables up to my neck and start the car.
Kiss me.
Rub me down with patchouli oil and send me to Mars.
Make me dance to Norwegian metal.
Put me on a plane to Iceland, one way.
Slide me down the Mariana trench.
Shoot me with bow and pillow.
Bow down, count to seven, whistle Goodbye Pork Pie Hat.
Let’s do some throat singing.
Let’s carve poems on Gertrude’s tombstone.
Let’s play Rachmaninoff on kazoo.
Let’s sleep under a bridge.
Let’s burn holy books.
It’s your turn.
Imagine yourself imagining.
The night shining through the bedroom window.
The hungry log.
The fertile kitchen.
Noodles for breakfast over Guam.
Too late.
The image changed.
Sorry. |
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every morning
4:30 a.m.
into the factory
propane smoke soon on the eyelids
pallets, packages, and pining away
working poor
was only a word to me
twenty years ago
mother and the food shelves
praying for nothing
community center luncheons
one milk apiece
children are starving in Africa
while men and women wander at home
somewhere there is a siren
but here there is none
wake to Jack Frost
listen to pipes bang
one of us slides on plastic feet
across the hardwood
years from then I wanted oak
in my apartment
never grew out of
my social condition. |
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It wasn't the winds seeping through the cement
walls of the villa that inspired the monster;
nor was it the flickering of the candles
melting on the hearth. It was the company
in the room, the blending of the sexes,
the poetry signaled between Claire's shoulders,
the hesitation in Byron's steps,
and the looks of deceit glowing from the eyes
of Shelley himself that inspired Mary to climb
the stairs and rest her head on the horse-haired
mattress, slipping into that spot--
the spot we all know to reside
right behind all closed eyes. |
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On the tenth of June, when the rain stopped falling,
Jeremy Minster made his way
To where he thought the peepers were calling,
Not to waste such a beautiful day.
Too late, too late, the marsh was soundless
Except for the cry of a mourning dove,
And the meaning he took from it all was boundless:
You get nothing at all for tardy love.
So back to his shack went Jeremy, wiser
About the ways of this wicked mould,
Be a spendthrift of pleasure, of time a miser,
And get out before even the spring gets old. |
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I hear them outside,
murder in their voices
I see the torches,
death metal in their hands
Before they come
Before they kill us,
I look at your face,
eyelids closed.
My fingers find your wrists
I hold your pulse and feel
elsewhere for your heart’s pain
Pity those who wait without patience,
lost in their black laurel of ignorance,
and those who live their lives alone,
who speak to cisterns and urns,
and who drown in the circles of voices
Give us,
outside of of sleep,
our serenity |
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Last night all that was on were Dracula movies.
October and its beloved holiday have arrived.
Time to pay to be scared in a place you can exit
if you begin to believe the music or the noises
of barren shadows swinging bony branches or find
the insane murderer too close, on a window ledge,
back seat or a shower stall. It’s not funny anymore,
the hand lying armless on the bed disintegrating to
chalky bone dust before your eyes. You are proud
a woman wrote Frankenstein–who else but a feminine
eye could see a male system so clearly and breathe
a fresh metaphor into its life – but will avoid that
website and give up travel plans to Transylvania
in favor of Madrid. Let a voice creep or strangle
someone else too frightened to turn off the light.
For the horrible, the Old Fashioned, the frost
on the pumpkin is enough of a reminder of death.
As is the Jack-o-Lantern’s cute but malicious
crooked smile, rigor mortis but done in bright orange.
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With all my nuts (and bolts) I still
didn’t get screwed. She was a firefly.
Aisle four, international foods. Coquettish
and ailing of heart, needing a distraction.
I stepped to the plate, ready to mount. We
talked about tacos and Boboli wheat crusts.
I had to have her. Asked for her number. She
toyed with me, rubbing the bottle of red wine vinegar
calling it the magic eight ball. “It is decidedly so.”
We talked for hours that night landline to landline.
Soul to soul, she thought. Penis to her pretty pink parts,
to me. We had coffee and river-walks and red velvet
cupcakes, kissing as though facing Armageddon. She
turned me down; a post-coital couple walking up the bank
of the riverbed; him, readjusting khakis—
her patterned skirt askew.
My baby felt dirty. The romance was gone.
I kept at her. Days later, no; still too soon.
More coffee and handholding and river-front petting.
She fell over me in spite of herself. Gave in to me, except for giving up the goods.
I was dishonest. Not hers to be had.
I dumped her two weeks later, compliments of the 21st century.
“We won’t b able 2b 2gether. Plz don’t ask me any ?’s.”
With all my nuts (and bolts) I still
didn’t get screwed.
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Should I become part
of a mad scientist’s plot
to build a being
out of pieces and bits,
please don’t let it be
my knees
because they are weak
and ache all the time;
please don’t let it be
my hips
lest the pops and cracks
betray the hidden monster
or my shoulders
lest the creature is
intended to be hunched.
Don’t use my heart,
it’s always been feeble
and subject to breaking;
a monster of all people
needs a strong one.
You can use my skin,
it’s loose
with plenty extra
or even my brain
if you don’t mind
your Frankenstein
opinionated and
thinking too much.
But please most of all
do not conjure my soul.
My life has been full;
I’m tired. |
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unwanted
unloved
the creation of your desire
your ego
your need
for validation
i scare you
as i should
or as your hubris
should
if you don't want
to be doomed
love me
here i am |
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I am my own Devil
in the darkness when I come calling
except when drinking lemon drop tea
and eating giant chocolate chip cookies
while emailing back that it’s ok that you can’t make it
or watching a film at Lagoon
with a former lover
all hands on deck
buried in armpits
six-pack to go
my body is the wick
to my minds fire |
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Frank Nathaniel is
a very unfortunate
name for my new son |
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For eyes, 2 cloves of garlic
For blood, ½ cup beef broth
For tears, one sad of salt
For breath, lung onions
For knowledge, one awareness of thyme
For control, an omniscient of sage
For
Skin, brown meat,
holding juices
in.
Cook at delusional
degrees of freedom
for a literary history
of hours.
Slice him up
Like pages,
against the grain
of morality.
Make trimmings into
metaphor
philosophy
gravy.
Devour.
like seeing
for the first
time.
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They say the trails
in your brain get wider
the more they're used.
If you take the same
path every day it grows
well-worn and familiar.
At a fork in the path,
you take anger - crush
a seedling into dirt.
Tomorrow along the path,
again this fork - anger,
a little easier to find.
Next day, you walk and look
for that forgotten second way,
calm, now lost and overgrown. |
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they’re taking me apart
in tiny pieces
hoping
to put me
back
together again
perhaps
the new version
will be better
than ever
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With our nips and tucks,
our pulling and injecting,
we may create what in our mind is beauty
while concealing our personality
underneath another layer of make up,
so that we may hide our insecurities,
and feed the basic lust and wants
of another human being.
That's life for us women
always re-adjusting ourselves
to fit someone else's idea of beauty
enough to think it our own.
We shave, color, bleach, reduce,
enlarge, freeze, cut, and paste
all that we are told is acceptable
while desecrating our body, our soul, our Self.
When men are not to blame,
women are the worst enemies,
daughters against mothers.
Mothers against daughters,
sisters in flesh or spirit,
we push with diet pills, diet drinks, surgeries.
When is beauty accepted in all sincerity?
My small slope shoulders, wider hips, imperfect me
has finally found freedom.
Freedom from magazine's gaunt looking females
starving while smiling for that ephemeral gift,
natural or artificial called beauty,
a fad for which we betray ourselves.
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