bluebird

Wet

2009-12-03T23:40:00.000-05:00

Feel it, Lover. The moon moves.

Not much like it was before—

whispers. Creep. Nightmares.

Why words now? Now is not the place.

My timid tongue moves through flesh.

Sorry. Your tides,

pulling me, suppressed flesh into flesh.

I’m terrified of death, of digging into your grave.

Pull— Push— Don’t move.

Or, yes, tremble. That feels appropriate.

My tongue awful amid this night.

Does that make it for you?

It wouldn’t. I’m ripped under riptide covers.

Sorry lover. Covers come. My tongue.

I’m sorry, Lover.

You’re all wet. Drowning

seems possible tonight. Please, don’t die

Let me be the one to—

But no, of course, I don’t,

not through this fleshly night.

The moon moves. —Feel.

Fiona

2009-11-14T21:33:00.002-05:00

He kept her.

He placed her.

—even more than she, I am that

He made her.

He named her.

I, at the sea. She, within a day or two

He named her in respect

to her failing affect.

—ebbing more swiftly, probably gone

The impression was more or less

that of a sudden wonder.

The most…

the most whole, somehow.

Not just her stammer and pant,

but the whole of her being.

I, not she, am softly carried, smiling— smiling at an absence of grace

Colors

2009-10-29T18:51:00.000-04:00

I worked on my Rubik’s cube. People came in and out of the front door and sometimes the back door. They probably looked at me but I didn’t look at them. I just sat in Dad’s armchair, in the corner of the livingroom, working on my Rubik’s cube.

Mom asked me a question. I remember hearing the slow notes of her voice but I didn’t hear the words. I remember that when she tried to talk to me I almost had the blue side done. Then, when she stopped talking, I screwed it up.

I thought about grocery shopping at Meijer. Mostly, I thought about the camera department. Dad always made me run and grab a pack of Fuji film while he went and picked up the bananas or the chicken or something. He said he was timing me.

People came in and out of the doors and there were no lamps on in the livingroom. They probably worried I was hurting my eyes staring at the Rubik’s cube because there was not much light coming in through the window. I could see their dark suits and dresses out of the corner of my eye but I didn’t look up at their faces.

Jim sat down in the chair across from me. He asked how I was doing. I showed him that I was almost done with the green side and then we were both quiet for a very long time. He stood up and walked away so slowly and he probably went to make himself a drink. I was reminded of the Super Bowl. Dad and he had their annual barbecue in the backyard. I don’t remember anyone ever watching the game but people were always laughing a lot. Sometimes they asked me to sit with them on the porch and I laughed with them. I thought about that for a long time but I stared down at the Rubik’s cube so no one would know I was thinking about anything.

Mom bought me a little black suit special for today but I didn’t want it. I wanted to wear my blue jeans and tee shirt like normal and go and work on the car in the garage. That’s what he would have wanted, I thought. But Mom made me put on that suit. I didn’t know if we would get rid of that car now.

She also told me I was supposed to say something at the church today but I couldn’t think of anything so I just stood up there and everyone looked at me. Afterwards they said it was okay that I didn’t have anything to say but I didn’t want to talk to them so I went and waited in the car. Then we drove home and everyone came along.

I thought about how quiet it was in the church and how it wasn’t quiet anymore now that we were home. I didn’t know what everyone suddenly had to say. I almost had the red side done. Dad used to say, “keep your chin up,” and I wanted to say that to Jim now because he was just staring at his shoes the whole time that he was sitting across from me, but he had stood up and left by the time I remembered to say it so I just mumbled it to myself.

Mom asked what I had said but I didn’t repeat it because she wouldn’t have understood.

When everyone finally left I almost had the yellow side done but all the other sides were jumbled and the Rubik’s cube looked like a mess. I got out of the armchair and set the cube down on the little coffee table. I set it down next to Dad’s old Rubik’s cube with all the sides the right color. I just wanted to make mine look like his.

Tall Woman II[1]

2009-09-05T17:34:00.002-04:00

I could only love a dead woman.

In death, women know the extremes of beauty.

My love spent thousands of years by the pond

starving, malnourished, withering away.

When I found her she was gaunt and deformed.

Her limbs stretched forever into the pool—

reaching for the final absolution,

bony fingers grabbing for some fresh fish.

Groping for a school no human had yet discovered,

still pure— without chemicals coursing its veins,

she slowly grew weak and weary.

Unable to find such schools—

every fish she plucked, already toxic—

she consumed nothing.

Her breasts fell lopsided.

Her flesh paled to a pasty white.

When I found her, long dead, I loved her.

Living women refuse to struggle for their ideals,

for such beautiful inhuman perfection.

I could never love a living woman.

[1] Throughout the entire writing process of this poem, I was staring at an image of Tall Woman II, the sculpture by Alberto Giacometti. Let that affect your reading as it may.

Mirrored

2009-09-02T10:31:00.000-04:00

I would often, oh so often, lay my head softly against your glass back. I would sometimes watch myself still but mostly I tried not to. This is how we were in love. You would sometimes shift, or worse, tremble, in your sleep and I was sure that you would shatter against my stiff cheek. Somehow, you never did and we felt a stronger love. But slowly, throughout the years, you stopped shaking and at first I imagined that was good but eventually I could not deny that it only meant that you were less alive. And when I took the chance, and gazed at myself, I too was gaunt and fragile, obviously dying. But still, we lay together every night and somehow that seemed lifelike. When you died I didn’t feel right telling people that I was shocked, that you seemed so healthy, or that I didn’t see it coming. But, of course, I did say those words and they obligatorily sympathized with me, acting as if they didn’t see your fate mirrored in me as well.

Evelyn 1909-1937, A Life in Six Sections

2009-08-26T23:49:00.001-04:00

She stood at the water’s edge.

They all said she was in love.

She stood at the water’s edge;

a hand grew from the surface,

sprouted like a pea plant.

She plucked waterlogged nails from each fingertip

and cracked them open like peapods.

She was searching.

We all knew she was in love.

She wore a white dress.

Damp, it clung to her body—

something like foreplay the way it groped her.

Some said they saw him:

flashing and flailing, drunken and dying.

She stood at the water’s edge.

Maybe a head was visible somewhere

in the depths, through the fog.

She stood staring, deeply in love.

A spring day, 1932

and everything was white.

He was happy and she too was smiling.

She said important words;

he repeated them but with feeling.

Flowers, rings, gems, kisses,

and were there doves?

Standing at the water’s edge,

Maybe she saw the blurred reflection of doves.

Oh, he touched her.

He scraped her white flesh

with razor finger nails—

told her to moan.

He bruised her,

mostly where clothes covered.

Oh, he touched her when he was drunk.

She was in love at the water’s edge.

A hand grew out and touched her.

She stood at the water’s edge

and we watched her weep.

They knew that she loved him.

Into the pool, blood dripped—

but no tears— and screams flooded. Screams.

Oh, he touched her.

She dropped slowly to her knees,

knelt at the water’s edge,

screamed, but we saw her weeping.

Oh, she was deeply in love.

Against a bloody hand, she fought.

Her body writhed almost as during rough sex

and blood dripped and bruises formed,

and she resisted, then weakly resisted.

That strong hand held tight.

From the depths, he tugged,

and at first, she screamed.

Then, we knew, too in love, she fell in with him.

Two Weeks

2009-08-15T13:18:00.002-04:00

I put my lighter away in the drawer

for the fifth time this year

(it’s only March).

It cooed I’ll see you in two weeks.

No, you bastard. I’m done with you.

But we both knew there was a reason

I didn’t throw it in the trash.

Again, it’s been two weeks,

so I take the slow walk

past the Methodist Church and

show up in your living room.

You look up at your calendar,

Oh, two weeks already?

reaching for our pill bottle.

Yes, I say, but I’m not staying.

I just wanted to see if

you were dead yet.

You take two.

With a smirk you retort, I’m trying,

but not hard enough, I think.

I’m leaving you.

This time it’s for good,

I tell you.

Well, it’s been three months,

and my nerves still shake for you.

We first met in the waiting room.

They told you,

You have two weeks.

I figured I could collapse with you

among Benzedrine and cigarettes for that long.

You can sleep when you’re dead,

but stubborn as hell,

you’ve developed a living slumber.

Now, I’m just trying to keep awake.

Three Months in Forty-Six Words

2009-08-14T00:55:00.001-04:00

I saw some sort of Art Punk movement coming on.

My feet scrambled to find the words

and my tongue died somewhere along the grass path.

My hands found shooting stars against your breasts;

that was the worst part.

But, like I said, I saw it coming.

We Were Always Looking for the Best Things in the Wrong Places

2009-08-12T01:08:00.003-04:00

We would search for wildlife on neighborhood streets,

and we spent many an evening hunting skunks and raccoons in backyards.

We sought out love in the caverns of each others’ eyes,

and tried, hopelessly, hour after hour to force it from between clenched palms.

What I Can Still Hear

2009-08-10T23:42:00.001-04:00

I can still hear Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

Someone sang it when I was young

but now I can’t remember who.

I can hear tires screeching

as I chased a pop fly

down the middle of the road

before that car crashed

into my tom-boy body.

And then, while I sat in my bed recovering,

with bruises all over my face,

the neighbor boy strolled past,

so I called out the window, “Hi, Jimmy”.

I can still hear him screaming all the way home

“A monster! A monster!”

I can hear Bethel cursing my name

when Jack and I popped out of the rumble seat

after she and her fiancé

had driven out to the woods

for some alone time.

Actually, I can’t. I’m overwhelmed

by the sound of childish laughing.

I can hear “Don’t tell Mummy!

Don’t tell Mummy!” Rudy standing over my chest

while I lay flat on my back on the pitcher’s mound

with a baseball imprint on my forehead.

I had thought I would be the nice sister,

give him an easy pitch.

I can still hear those rascal boys squealing in terror

after Grandma dropped a sheet over her head

and went and knocked on the clubhouse door

crooning “Woooo,”

holding a butcher’s knife.

I still hear my cough,

horrible and persistent,

the dry kind that tears apart your throat.

That was when I went to the hospital.

There, they asked me about all those ear infections.

I can still hear my mother in our one bedroom,

“We just can’t afford the doctor, Sweetheart,”

but at the hospital she had to say,

“Go ahead with the surgery, sir.”

I can hear myself screaming FUCK YOU

and my fist thudding against his cheek

after the doctor scribbled what had happened.

Although, I guess that was really

the first thing I could not hear.

Dad's Apple Tree

2009-08-09T14:04:00.001-04:00

When we were very young we often escaped out

to that old tree dad planted in the backyard.

We ran in circles around it,

me, slender and with rosy cheeks, chasing you,

or you, wheezing but giggling, chasing me.

Apples hung weighty on the branches above

but we never knew where they came from.

Mom would serve us cold lemonade

and cradle your fragile back

when we fell to rest in the grass,

you, exhausted, and me, playing along.

She would remind me in a whisper,

Maddie, you can’t tire your brother out like that.

Dad never allowed us to pick the apples

but they would eventually plummet to the ground.

Then we walked out to the backyard

and picked the rotten fruit from off the ground.

I always carried the basket back to the kitchen

because your frail arms couldn’t handle the weight.

There, we helped mom turn the apples into sauce.

Once, you tried to cut the tree down

with dad’s axe, revenge after being scolded

for playing outside in your church clothes.

You failed to fell that tree,

the axe was too heavy to swing hard enough,

and when you returned inside, panting,

dad hit you with his belt twelve times,

once for each year you had neglected

to become man enough to chop that tree through.

Covered in bruises, you carefully fell asleep

with your head on my shoulder that night;

I couldn’t even console you—

the pain was too overwhelming,

so all night I lay, unable to sleep,
staring out the window at the tree,

apples dangling from its branches.

That was the day we stopped playing out back,

we stopped looking dad in the eye

and we stopped asking mom to make sauce.

We stopped because now we knew

that those apples came from dad.

Cute

2009-08-07T13:28:00.002-04:00

She told me, “They’re cute.”

Mom always said, “They’re cute.”

I snapped, “Bitch, I’m not painting self-portraits,”

and so she asked if I needed to get laid.

The answer was no but I fucked her anyway,

mostly to stop thinking about my mother.

I think that I am cute

because I was often

told that I am cute.

I think that cute

is childish. I do not

want my art to be cute

and I do not want her

to hang it on the fridge.

Once, when we were naked she sweetly called me Darling,

just like Mom called me when I helped her with the baking.

I scraped four bloody lines across her back in retribution.

Later, I painted her shapely scab-lines across a bronze canvas

and called it art. She did not call it cute.

Finally, she has learned her lesson.

Mom and I never had sex.

That’s the main difference

between what I’ve got here

and what I had then.

She cooks and she cleans the house up pretty nicely.

She manages the bills with money her father left her

and she quit smoking because of my asthma.

I mostly focus on painting.

She always knocks before she enters my studio

and she often surprises me with exotic lotions

and skimpy negligee.

I mostly focus on painting.

I mostly focus on painting

because I can’t focus on her.

When I do, I focus on her dinners

and the mopped floors.

Then I focus on my mother’s ashtrays—

unused because of my asthma.

I try to focus on her

sweet smell and on her perky tits.

I try to focus on her bronze skin

but I can only focus on the luke-warm

bathtub, on the red drops covering

her pale skin, on my father’s scream.

About my paintings,

My mother always said

They’re cute.

If she could just appreciate my art

then she would be different;

then things would be different.

Then I could save her.

What Who Watches

2009-08-07T00:35:00.000-04:00

oh! frantic women

cry

back and forth back and forth

think they what’s seen ought talk

or in smoke spell words forms

or depictions of men still

or straddling or stomping

like angels amongst the whores it’s their men

the women watch from windows

of wilting flames (fire or sex red)

no not oh only but also

STOP or i see you you

bastard! men they pace

back and forth

on slick cobblestone sling dice and

shout six or seven

in coattails and slink in shadows in alleys

where there they claim chimneys but never

return while still smoking

oh!

the frantic women cry please

but no

never while still smoking

To Ann Beattie

2009-08-05T12:29:00.000-04:00

The snow has long since melted, Ann,

but you’ll never believe,

while it still fell

a chipmunk snuck into the old cabin.

That shit only happens in short stories.

He used to wait obediently at the back door,

like a pet dog, seeming to ask us,

while we scraped our dinners into mute mouths,

when will you let me out of here?

but when we opened the door to let him slip away,

he’d refuse, and scurry off

to hide in the dark crevice beneath the bed

until, through sex, mostly,

we had been distracted from his want to escape.

Then he would return, clawing at the back door,

irritating our trained silence.

In your fumblings, Ann, you forgot theft

as a mode of retelling.

This is my poem of a boy;

he grew up, fell in love,

and spent a winter with his lover in the country.

That chipmunk did escape one of those winter evenings.

It was late and I think we had both had a bit too much.

I went out back for a cigarette,

as she lay, in a sweatshirt and tight jeans,

asleep on the couch. He followed me out,

gray and probably a bit balding.

I watched him freeze to death,

as I sat, motionless from cold or drink,

on the wooden patio furniture.

Really, it was predestined, Ann,

because all tiny creatures die in the end,

must die in the end.

No one expects the small things to survive.

I left his still body on the back patio,

to be routinely covered by snow.

Then the thaw came, we moved,

and we must have left him out there.

You said, Ann, that neither you nor your lover

could have said where the heart was, but in my case,

we both briefly knew. He darted about the cabin,

then died and was forgotten—dry and motionless,

decomposing deep below the surface.

2008-07-08T23:07:00.003-04:00

As long as I can tie a scarf

around my bicep

then, later, fall down the stairs,

eventually, I'll come to

in a car crowded with EMTs

who steal heart attacks

from rich men who deserve them.

For money and power,

I gladly give up reality.

The Most Influential Loss

2008-07-06T21:13:00.004-04:00

The glass plummets towards a sticky barroom floor

and shatters

with a suicidal sense of

lacking self-worth.

Swept up, the dust bin ambulance

whiles him to his dumpster mausoleum.

In black suits

and wire-rimmed spectacles

we mourn our front line soldier

under the neon red, white, and blue

of the Bud Light and Exit signs

at this barfly funeral.

With our whiskey breath

and vodka steps

we stumble over

barstools like grave stones

and leave flowers

by the draft-spigot tomb.

As I reach for a new drink,

"Hey, barkeep, read

a passage from that old book

you got up there."

The stoky man

reaches to the back of his highest shelf

and flips to a dog-eared page:

I do not even

pass judgment on myself;

I am not conscious of anything

against me, but I do not

thereby stand acquitted.

I raise myself up,

swallow two more shots,

then at the the door

I tip my hat

to my dear, departed friend

and stagger

towards the hospital

to see how my dear dad

is coming along.

Humans Come with Relationships

2008-07-06T21:03:00.004-04:00

An elderly man stumbled

over a crack in the sidewalk.

His cane clattered on the ground.

Balancing on shaky legs

he requested of his grandson,

"fetch that for me."

The young boy stood still.

"No,"

he defiantly replied.

A bony finger, outstretched,

pointed to the cane

hopelessly collapsed on the ground.

Fire burned in his tired eyes.

"Pick it up now,"

he commanded.

The child took three or four steps,

knelt down and retrieved the cane,

shuffled back,

and placed it in his grandfather's hands.

...Not Help but Smile

2008-07-06T20:45:00.003-04:00

Some nights we'd lay stranded

on our beach island hammock home front

where our words grew

around us like palm fronds.

You'd question me

and I'd till your reserved soil,

our free flowing foliage answers

were always well-planted.

We'd snuggle closer

and I'd learn your body

while you stared up

at the cloudless sky, thinking

those stars know you

before you knew yourself

but most of our twilight hours

were spent on our asphalt shore

where the high tide headlights

never rushed in too quickly

and we'd debate our potential

during which our worries were wasted

in misty smoke breath.

Each night

the luminous lamp light

rose with the setting sun

and we'd stare up, directly.

broken blind eyes

but only separation

could break smiles,

those elephant-ivory teeth

that gleamed serenely

like perfect moments

captured from time

your perfect moments

you're perfect

In the backyard

we were the natives

standing hand in hand

with our hearts in our palms

we never missed a beat

or a wave crashing

Eventually each grain of sand

is pulled out to the depths.

You followed along.

Interwoven fingers struggled

but those waves

swept you out into the back alley sea

and beyond--

ivory,

strewn about desolate pavement.