April 21

Past Tension


When we say the same thing at the same time the world
turns inside-out like a glove. I was walking
and the rain was covering my face in little kisses.
I pictured you and I pictured your hands, talking
inscrutably through a magical telephone.
Your fingers were made of electricity and the curled
cord, both at once. I wanted to be alone.
Instead I came to the apartment of whoever this is.
She reminds me, to put it bluntly, of your mother
if she were horribly, devastatingly, unclever.
I have stared microscope-close at your palms and they have never
been pixelated; I can't even separate
her individual hairs from one another,
but I don't need to when I masturbate.

April 20

Voicebox

A sound can be kept alive indefinitely.
Sometimes telephones hum to each other at night.
Someone once spoke into a box of bone
so finely crafted that the echo remained
unborn until the box was opened. I want
to be the voice that's keeping you awake
right now. This is the kind of night
that turns every sound the color of bone.
You can see the trails of light that remain
whenever a thought slides bast. You want
to find their source, but you're barely awake
and as brittle and cold as dry bone.
An incandescent halo remains
on the backs of your eyelids. A ring. Who wants
to talk at this time, and who's awake?
Silence scatters the remains
of sleep. It seems to want
to join you in bed, awake.
All I want
is awake,
awake.

April 19

Trick

The magician laughs--his teeth twist
and glint like a skeleton key. He holds her
mouth open: empty. He produces an egg, vanishes
it down her throat. Then a lime, a pair of golf
balls. Item after item he flourishes and sticks
between her lips; an iron, an empty pair
of socks. She stands, bows,
and walks off the stage.

The audience decides it was probably sleight of hand.

April 18

A Apolitical Sonnet

You trace a dirty finger through the frost
on someone's windshield, sign your name in blank
space. Then you cross it out. The air is ghost-
thin, sharp as vinegar. You want to sink
a Caribbean cruise ship, or incite
mob violence at Six Flags Over Georgia.
At least, you want to want these things. The rate
at which these urges fade into the mortar
of reality depresses you a little,
but so do many things, like answering
machines and airports. Snowflakes start to settle
in colonies along your sleeves. A song
is vaguely audible within the bar,
ancestral hippies criticizing war.

April 17

Magic

He talks about the things he talks about.

Sometimes the words make little pastel spirals.
When that happens, he talks about pastel spirals.
I like these pastel spirals he says these pastel spirals
are a concrete image. You look at the pastel spirals
and at him. What makes these pastel spirals
different? He smiles. These pastel spirals

are a concrete image. He says these things
happen like magic and like magic
you don't believe in him anymore.

April 16

Calendar

Monday swerves in from the other lane
and plows into our back end like a lance-
wielding knight. "What the fuck's your deal?"
we shout, slamming our door, "Is this a race?"
We can see Monday in there, laughing. "How dare
you!" Positively furious now, we near
the vehicle. Monday rolls down one clean
window, calls out something in an arcane
tongue (like Spanish) and hits the gas. We crane
our necks, but we can't seem to get a clear
look at the plates; plus, do we really care?

April 15

Piano

Christ, he can play! The thin
notes crawl across your skin
like ants. The water in
your mouth turns into vin-
egar. Your eyes begin
to sting, the world to spin.
You sink into the din,
a pierced Mylar balloon.
You wake up (it's still June)
and leave before you swoon
again. A newsprint moon
corrupts the afternoon
sky like a blister. Soon
you won't recall the tune.

April 14

Blackface

Gravity used to be a friend of mine.
I strap sticks of gelignite to my thigh.
I have stewed and am stewing in time's brine.

My juicy fruit gets chewed up on the vine.
I steer clear of wandering uteri.
Gravity used to be a friend of mine.

My arteries are streaks of turpentine.
I wear this town like a patch over my eye.
I have stewed and am stewing in time's brine.

I turn your paranoia into wine.
I'm at your window. Do I terrify?
Gravity used to be a friend of mine.

My mouth is stitched up with that dotted line
you signed in '69, and this is why
I have stewed and am stewing in time's brine.

O Icarus, won't you be my Valentine?
With practice, yes, you too can fail to fly.
Gravity used to be a friend of mine.
I have stewed and am stewing in time's brine.

April 13

Party Girl

While the other guests ticked
and scuttled through hors d'oeuvres
and conversation, you
stood, pale and blank, silent
in your pretty dress.

Moonlight turned wine
into blood. You were the last
to leave, before the sun
ascended emptyhanded,
red as a wasp on fire.

April 12

Green Shirt

Your hand is jelly in the bowl
of his. He is so tall!
The phosphorescent ocean quakes
whenever his feet fall.

Later, taking off his shirt,
it permeates the scene,
turning the blue sky to chartreuse,
the sun to Paris green.

April 11

Tokyo Storm Warning

April: the sky darkens like a cut
apple. A sticky honeysuckle smell
collects in trash can lids. A single jet
swims past, leaving a smear, a vapor trail
behind it, like a foot sliced on an oyster.
Your mind's as subtle as a cannonball:
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Bind up the wound with masking tape. Take care
it doesn't leave a scar or start to fester.
Imagine, if it makes things easier,
her kisses issuing from the mouth of a goat,
bearded, full of roses and barbed wire.
The thunder's pace is quickening. It gives
the impression of a distant dance of hooves.

April 10

Lovers Walk

Painfully painlessly bending
the light rays around them like binary
stars. Such inordinate orbiting!
Centers of focus, of gravity,
hairs on the back of your tongue.

April 9

Sneaky Feelings

The sex is pleasant. It's the metronome
precision of it that's the problem. It's
as if he has the blueprints of a home
and builds it nightly so your body fits
around it like surgical gauze to a wound
applied by competent and plying fingers
that play your body like a cold untuned
piano, again, again, as the sound lingers
in the hall as empty as a galleon wrecked
a century ago. It's no surprise
that as he snores bouquets of dust collect
obscenely in the corners of his eyes.
He is a minaret, a dry sea-shell,
the colossus you preferred to Ariel.

April 8

Possession

His fingertips are wide and rough. They scrape
like match heads on the underside of your arm.
He stinks of sweat. Up on a fire escape

a figure retches. The little hairs on the nape
of your neck are standing, near-priapic, with alarm.
His fingertips are wide and rough. They scrape

across your cartilage. Your mouth's agape
into the palm of his massively warm
hand, and only the apostrophes escape,

becoming limbless birds. You wake. You wipe
your mouth off on your pillowcase. The harm
from his fingertips, so wide and rough as they scrape

your thigh, is in your mind. You're in good shape
these days. You've moved out to a little farm
(Your therapist suggested an escape).

But even though you've learned to say it--tape
recordings prove this--and nothing came to term,
his fingertips are wide and rough. They scrape
the walls at night, and there is no escape.

April 7

New Lace Sleeves

The dress is nice. It fits you like a curse.
I mean, a corpse. A corset? Maybe that's it.
Something that might be worn by Mrs. Whatsit--
or is it Which? Who knows. The point is, of course
I like it. Even if the sleeves are long,
so long you seem to move at quarter-speed,
the lacework shimmering chalk-white with dread.
The collar, spiderlike, appears to cling,
to climb your neck. It veils your face in, quote
unquote, an air of careful accident.
I wouldn't be surprised if underneath
your lips were sponges bloated with blood. Your teeth
had little barbs and hooks. Your tongue was a bent
coat hanger twisting down a stranger's throat.

April 6

Black and White World

The clouds today protect the universe
from boundlessness

and colorlessly fill it, like a hearse,
with soundlessness.

April 5

The Imposter

I haven't visited
that beach in
ages. It used to terrify
me: I'd imagine

jellyfish as big as tablecloths
lurking globulous below
the surface. I don't
look scared here, though,

smiling, six, with my
father, our sand
castle half constructed.
He's smiling too, one lean

finger curled ineluctably into
the breast pocket of
a shirt that is forever
untucking.

April 4

Tart (a Sonatina)

Light strains through the screen like pulp from orange
juice. You make a small tornado in
your tea. You wonder what Mother would think.
That's what you do. Outside a gentle spring
breeze unclenches everyone's buttocks. Fuck spring.
Lately, you've been feeling like an orange
inverted, a rind encased in flesh. You think
that if you pricked your skin, you'd collapse in
upon yourself, just like those soldiers in
that movie, the name of which refuses to spring
to mind. You're not a member of the Think
Important Thoughts Brigade. I'd like an orange
is what you think. The juggernaut of spring
advances, drenching the world in green and orange.

April 3

Spooky Girlfriend (unfinished)

You reach for one, impatient, but your hands
refuse to grip. This is the terror Cinderella
must have felt amidst her rodent throng,
or Jane and Michael Banks, when, with a song,
their nanny descended from the maelstrom, strands
of quaking darkness caught in her umbrella.

April 2

From distant star to this here bar, the me,
the you, where are we now?
...................................................You crumble
your crackers into your soup. You look at me
and I look at the ceiling. I want it to crumble
away, allow some darkness in. Ice makes
small exclamations in our glasses. “But you're
so much older,” you repeat, as if it makes
a difference. “It's nothing. You're beautiful. You're
mine,” even though you look nothing like Alison.
Held vertical by the promises we keep
(never to cheat, never to settle for any hit
other than a perfect bullseye), we keep
aiming and aiming
................................and when the planet hit
the sun, I saw the face of Alison.

April 1

No Action

The bicycle clatters
to the pavement
like a marionette
with cut strings.

The newspapers
have been folded
into little
boats. Someone

steals a bicycle,
starts a fire.
I had forgotten
that touching you

is like touching
an electric
fence that hasn't
been left on.

Creating this in a burst of napowrimo-based inspiral love

See title.

I've never been able to keep a blog going. We'll see.

I want a place to put all my poems, and maybe other things too. I've been doing napowrimo on the poetry free-for-all at www.everypoet.org until now (and will continue to do so). Now it comes to its own location!!