Four Poems (June 20, 2009. Issue 6.)

Humbucker

Inside there is a box of hawks dying
under the toe of an elephant and another box
that keeps the pair of pliers used for holding
the mouse to the megaphone by the tail
and a place to keep the bullet you threw
in the fire and a place where rainwater freezes
into the shape of a bell and finally
there is a tiny peephole the size of a man
in a picture taken of the earth from
the moon. So crazy that hands

have been so easily domesticated
and how carelessly the fingers let
their wings fall to the ground as if
believing their clumsiness would be
a vacation from the boredom of beauty.
That a machine can speak

with a body that inhales universes
and a tongue that slithers
under the house of god is a gift that must
make all the miracles ever granted
shake with a jealousy like the pit
of the throat grabbing at the fist of wind
vibrating in the open mouth. Now
go to hell.

Accident

That’s what I said. Multitasking is how most things happen.
You put a bird on one shoulder and a bird on the other
and every time you turn your head the conversation
yanks you like a worm in a hole. Or recall how a snake eats
and you will understand the hours, section by section.

Huff and puff, hem, haw. Walk into traffic.
I need those amendments to my will fifteen minutes ago.
Electric organs on the corner of fifth and main,
a billboard of a bum selling his guts out.
The flowers have a paradise of shit. Around the park
the smell of sweat jogging between breasts,
the vice of the subway and its breathless temples, the rats
praying for skin. Yelling at the phone on a box of air,
I damn near broke myself wide open. Right there.

Dusty Springfield

I always thought that famous version of
“Son of a Preacher Man” was sung by   
a black woman with absolute love in her soul and
more understanding than   my poor cracker ass
could ever know of hardship and 
the necessity of   caressing 
your lover’s hair and even when 
I was sixteen I remember   hearing
that sweet piping of the singer’s voice like
a velvet fork tuned   against the knowledge
of man’s essential desires and
thinking then how   that woman must
have known some poor Southern Baptist boy she
met outside   of her town church in Louisiana (or
some place south and incomprehensible to   
us northerners) and must’ve twisted her
mousey foot in the dirt and taken   the boy
by the hand and walked down dusty paths
behind the withered   country church that
was an apple baking in the sun and
kissed him lightly   with her lips and
grown into him like a pair of wings while
the preacher   daddy sermonized at the hot pulpit
and all the women in hats sat in the   pews
waving fans in front of their faces
as the two kids played hooky and   doctor
behind the house of God, so

you can imagine my shock at
the   cool and jazzy words of my fantasy
ushering from between the thin lips
of   that leggy and buxom British blonde who
looked as if she was my honky   stereotype
of how angels were supposed to look with
a torrent of   unimaginative hair and skin that
looked like the glowing hide of a sheered   lamb
and who never knew a black boy in the south
named Billy Ray and who   
you can be damn sure
never had her golden kisses
stolen by   anyone
on the sly. 

A Window Day 

I’d wonder if the walkway was getting bluer. All morning
the question of how   the sky is walking 
is answered by a lazy gait of shadows
that never   changes pace. Heavy business among clouds,
all whiteness, circling like   patients
in an asylum. Yes, heavy indeed. 
My eyes spell a crooked   name
on a marquis, as if the theater
had been closed for decades. 
A   happy wish to take this ladder
and get up there. Read the fix. 
Venetian   graveyard of bent slats
from the blinds of ineffectual madness.