Unsung Mountain Song
If the unsung songs
of mother mountain did shine
like pumping life
along the purpled stain
of the mountain side,
I might attempt to climb
its booming belly.
There, the wind could accept
my flying hair
as a tickle to the formation's womb,
the grand baby, me,
teetering the edge of God's hustle
in a saliva slick afterbirth.
I would be bore with shame
from some dimpled cave,
the evil crown of my eyebrows
atop the battered indention
of my head,
bruised by the border
of the angry vagina I left
with early exit.
I would dare the massive contractions
of this entire earth
to pulse the bare-back grasses
of my dissatisfaction,
to touch the un-plucked strings
of my breasts' breathing soul harp,
to purr my death in gushings of blood
and glacier,
but I would be met only
with the silence
that answers a rebellious climb.
The mountain would stretch
its fat haunches,
eating up the land,
and I would stay simple and small
grasping at the roots.
Wife
I have paid the price of two bucks
to watch my life pass
in the time of strange metal,
inside the free cry of levitation,
something much less than a floatation device,
feet proper, but unbalanced
as unbalanced always goes,
worry, worry goes
the plain canary wife.
Unbearable wind, I am not just a wife,
I am not just a pelvis,
a clavicle, a womb, a femur,
or a damned rib.
I am not just a death sung
in a dawn's hard scream
on a park bench somewhere sleeping,
the dogged face of an umbrella
my last, my last, my last,
want.
I have only lost the drum, dear,
maybe I have dared my last, my last,
my last, want.
Or, maybe I have just forgotten
how to survive,
a woman scared of her own sun.
Especially When God Turned His Head
A tin roof
slick with rain,
the remnants
of floating life,
slipped from her hands
like a prayer mounted from
her chest
(holy holy broken painting
of dim colors.)
She allowed patience
to enter her sad mouth,
her private chapels
infiltrated by a clutter
of ravenous birds,
(and those bibles
would not scatter
nor shake the shadows
fallen from her devotion-shaped
breaths.)
She cried
like a Sunday night,
a secret
that filled the holes
in her walls and doors,
a secret
that filled the ropes
of her sorrow-filled womb
(like soft sinking
forgiveness
on the last sigh
of leaving wind.)
The flowers brought
to her knees
were from his daddy's grave,
tied with a sob,
tied with two ribbons
(a cry bouquet meant
for promises, meant
completely for love,
praise, home,
and the gentle
drying of spun clothing.)
But she found herself
in the crunch
of a lone concrete walkway,
in the peeling of foundation,
another perfect day
in the song of her mind,
where the sky would never burn,
or wear down her intimacies.
She is the bell broken,
and her flaw in glass
reflects no pointing angel
(her lifting
and parting
of a skirt's hymn
was made entirely
out of paper.)
a destroying
A euphoria began
disheveled
(scattered from a strong
handful of wind)
detailed in stories
of the dead.
There were flowers
everywhere,
struck
from their headstones,
eating the mind
like delicate colors
for brunch,
a fibrous meal
of crossed legs
and arms.
Grief covered
all things
like a steady cream,
with death, death,
death on the grass,
and the bend
of ghost knee.
There was a flicker
of hair
in the afternoon
light,
lost in the sadness
of a deep
destroying.
My Father and I Discuss Animals
We were sitting in the TV room, watching
a documentary about North American Bison.
An old bison fought with a young bison
and gained a lot of ground on him, but
the young bison won, the old bison
walked away slowly, and the narrator
said that victor had earned the right
to mate with the females of the herd,
and the herd rushed out of the valley
and the old bison fell on all knees in the pale grass,
his body a contour map of a vast and vacant island.
After a few days alone in the valley,
the old bison tried to cross a river
and lay down and died a few feet into the riverbed.
Most of his face was sticking up from the water
and his huge black eyes were still open.
I made a hurt noise and said that that was the saddest thing.
You said, "Well, I'm not sure if they have emotions,"
and I said, "Well, I'm sure he wasn't sitting there
listening to sad music on his iPod and writing awful poems on his blog,
but I believe that all in all he had a negative experience,"
and you chuckled and said, "Well, I'm not sure if bison have iPods."
My Father and I Discuss Vegetables
You were trying to shave a baby carrot onto a pastrami sandwich
because we were out of lettuce. You said to yourself, "This is why
we should have gotten adult carrots," then you looked up at me
with the funny face you make and said, "You know?"
The light from the window was falling
just below the rooster clock with the egg pendulum that sways
like the head of a slightly nauseous dog.
I asked if adult carrots lived in tiny houses
or brought the baby carrots to tiny daycares.
And you said they had tiny briefcases made out of leaves
that they carried to work, and then I asked
if there was a size between baby carrots and adult carrots,
a kind of carrot that doesn't know what to do with itself.
And you said, "I don't know. Maybe."
And you went back to trying to shave another baby carrot,
and I laughed, but the sound never made it over my throat.
Virginia Beach, 2004
The choir kids and bandos had a field trip together
down from Connecticut, all of us too hot for manners,
if that made a difference. Word at the continental breakfast was
Lindsey McKinney had just dumped Andy Drake.
The jazz band got adjudicated early that afternoon
in a flat auditorium with shy but well-meaning air conditioning.
A few of the Bass 1’s came up from the hotel to watch.
We never ended up talking about Andy’s saxophone solo,
just made small vaguely hurt sounds inside of our throats.
We all saw Lindsey sitting right behind with the other trumpets.
We all watched Andy stand up, crutched by his horn, posing
for a picture she wasn’t about to take. We all heard the horn
clutch at the heavy air and then dissolve in it like a hard pill.
We all could fathom the weight of that horn as he sat back down.
Lower Allston Revisited
I counted fifty-three beer cans on the clearing, which meant
that one of the revelers had taken a can of beer for the road.
It had always been a town for drinking outside in droves
and then finishing the last drink in the safety of some home.
The dogs took their fleas for walks. The cats carried empty
mousetraps around in their teeth. Neighbors would pair off
for their Sunday strolls to practice refusing one another
eye contact. “Keep Allston Strange,” as one permutation
of the motto goes. Every Sunday there was a pub show.
Every night was a pub show. Every day was a pub night.
The streetlamps all had permanent hangovers. The Russian
grocery on Harvard hanged itself in the middle of the road
and nobody said a word. The comic book shop next door
cried blood for a day or two, but customers agreed the plot
felt contrived. They held clandestine potlucks to discuss what
should happen instead, but they declared the events non-canon
in the end. The stew that Jenna made wasn’t really even vegan.
The people who lived at the edge of our block grew a patch
of clove cigarette butts in their front yard. The old man across
the street got arrested for feeding the pigeons—outrageously,
as he had been very careful always to feed the same pigeon,
one fact we all could corroborate because one very fat pigeon
could always be spotted waddling by his stretch of sidewalk.
One supposes Old Tubby is now expected to waste away alone.
Who could ever imagine that little blob taking flight?
Table of Contents
Tequila Sunrise
long thought into night
our hair on the shared pillow
yours an extension of mine
one big mess
the sheets balled like a fist
at the end of the bed
your eyes half awake
half dreaming
your eyes the color
of the universe exploding into being
my hands on you
on all parts of you
my head filled with
a concert of noise i can’t mute
we drank so much last night
almost got kicked out, but
we knew the guy tending bar
bottomdwellers, he calls us
but we never listen, just
do the deeds and make love
and now, this is the best
right here
the night a goner
the morning sun laughing
pinching us
and we ignore him
because this is it
the end of the world in a cozy queen-size
warm and damp and smelling of us
of us together
that sex smell
that lingers like cuffs in the air
we drank tequila
and we loved it
Memorial Day 2010
The whole family gathers together
around a beatup grill –
its duct taped fuel line
radiating a perfume of propane and
meat fallen through the grates,
charred to the bottom and reborn as
coalblack pieces of suet, indistinguishable
from charcoal now and permanently
stinking up the porch…which is
nothing more than a tiny patch
of dead backyard grass
flies overhead like buzzards.
Everyone gorging on light beer
hot dogs and hamburgers
seven-layer dips shouting obscenities
pontificating religious dogoodery
rightwing politics and the
problems in the Middle East and
how, if they were in charge, it would
all be different. Cheap makeup and clothes
tasteless tattoos snaking up wilted arms
dulled from age and brown summer tans.
Fruit platters of cantaloupe and honeydew
for dessert and everyone livening up living it up
the world the same but changing for them
growing warmer the embrace tighter
hoorah-ing into the night –
cursing and steaming and
letting themselves forget
what it is that they swore
never to forget.
Unwelcomed Guest
hello demons
found in the dark corners
of my lifetime, welcome back
so you can latch onto me
to remake me the man I was,
before I can kick you away
you led me to drive down
a one-way the wrong way,
I blamed the scotch
started earlier when
it was still dusk
but then blackness rose
up from below, I recall
I used to imagine Hell’s address
was somewhere between my basement
and the center of the earth
but I know now different;
Hell is in something
I’ve ingested, life as ugly
as I knew it
swarming all around
stabbing and punching at me
for now,
demons
I’ll let you win,
I can’t fight you any longer
I’ll never quit.
We Are Not Talking
because I want to tell you
that I got fucked for
the first time since
we'd been together,
that I replaced your
love with hate
just so I could feel something.
I want to tell you
I am not proud;
that it felt like the time as a kid
I had forgotten to feed the neighbor’s cat,
then the next day I found it dead—
it wasn’t my fault,
it didn’t starve
but that day, I was getting high
it was something I had to do,
I had to tell someone
something bad happened
to be honest
I didn’t come with that other girl
while we bumped
in the backseat, I was
thinking of you on top,
at the same time, worried –
if the car’s suspension
would hold up from that…
I didn’t plan to go home
and break my hand,
but it felt good
for a split second after I hit the stud,
and I heard the bone snap
immediately
I wanted to shout at you
that I still cared
if yelling those words
didn’t make me hate myself
or change the fact
the world is flat
or least of all
didn’t make you feel
how easy it is to say nothing
new at all.
at eleven-fifty-nine
put on Miles Davis
if you’re not sleeping
or not nothing... milling around
on your notes,
what are we
anyway, there are times
we say we care about
each other far away
drifting.
drifting.
in and out of
love, we do this
as empty people
do. the pillow says
sink, quit
when it talks--
it's only talk
About Alison
when we walked I said
that you looked like a movie star
dumbly, that’s what I came up with
as your hair flowed softly
in the light against
your sundress, I imagined
taking off, on the question:
Could I ever want
a friend, could I
ever not want something
as sweet as this walk
on a sunny day?
You told me you’re kind of a prude
though you look the part of
the mid-western farm girl
whom I make giggle. Your
father wants to stab me
with a pitchfork.
That’s the movie! Yes,
I wanted a movie star, you wanted
to move back home where we
cannot take these walks,
and months go by
before you
call yourself an asshole,
for being out of touch
then say, you think
of me often.
Table of Contents
The Hillside Brothel's Code of Conduct
Smile as you undress Let him freely caress Show no distress After, clean up the mess Your real name, never confess
Vintage Porn
The slick pink is missing
in the jerky frames of gray-hued erections
and dark-lipped provocations.
The moaning love-call is muted
to a mouthing, voiceless gimmick
of seduction: cunt meets dick.
Here comes the oldest show on earth:
The wet slap of coupling
comes with soundless friction,
jostling ejaculations.
But I am not the intended audience:
In the wild west, men in waiting rooms,
horny for a whore,
watched the films as goad, spur.
Brief brothel films of ass and titties
in familiar and foreign cities
accompanied by five-minute ditties.
This is getting ridiculous.
The men put their cocks inside, backside,
the couples—nameless—silently progress
toward climax, with mechanical congress.
H. W. Long, M.D., Knows Some Things about Marriage that All Sane People Ought to Know
For instance, Semen is a most powerful stimulant. Many women increase in flesh as they avail themselves of this healthful food.
For Example, We eat when we are hungry, but it is wrong to gorge oneself on such food. Don’t wear the poor man out.
Furthermore, Some wives are so passionate they will ‘spend’ several times to the husband’s once. They are lovely, highly accomplished, and in no sense ‘worldly minded.’ Indeed, many husbands rejoice in a lascivious wife.
Last and most important, Let the husband keep his head, and the wife utterly lose hers. Let go, go, go! No one cares where! Do this again and again—married life will be glorious!
(H.W. Long, M.D. published a sexual self-help text in the early 20th Century. Much of his advice is very sane, some of it is quite zealous.)
Table of Contents
Dolores
The little girl I used to babysit for grew up like Wendy
and got her drivers’ license before I did. She drives
around in a minivan the color of burnt sugar, Scandinavian skin in the summer,
a busted overbite from trying tuba and not quitting too quickly.
When she was eleven she told me her stomach was broken. I knew
what she meant but was too scared to believe a little girl could be brave.
We were sitting at the bottom of her sleigh
bed in the dark, trying to summon the angel Gabriel
with a Ouija board. We plucked the bells from her pet birds’
throats and tucked them under our fingernails.
The nuns at her school wear their habits
over their ears so they don’t accidentally get pregnant by an angel
whisper, she told me smiling, mouth
not yet injured by a boy’s instrument.
She pushed the Ouija piece with a gentle vengeance,
as if it were a plastic buttercup that had guessed an incorrect love
of butter in the past. Guided by the voiceboxes of dwarf house swans
at our fingertips, the angel Gabriel was unable to predict
the disordering of her body’s future
and spelled all the answers to her soul’s questions wrong. She asked
me not to blow out the dollhouse lamp so he could find his way
back home. She plugged in her horse shaped night-light
that caste a trail through the dingy clouds of her wall
and told me to Shut up, he’s foreign,
though I never said a thing
to save her.
Guest Star
The boy in the apartment on Poplar-street is into thin, white
t-shirts, women of the same architecture. He wears a crystal
on a black string around his neck, a prison for deficient rainbows.
In the ice storms, people across a ten block radius are all listening
to cassettes by candlelight, like a confined cult
dedicated to the noise that carries us to heaven.
The boy on Poplar closes the window
in an attempt to retain the heat from the electric
honey you coated the cobwebs with and spread on the slices of bread
stacked at the center of the hook rug.
When you stuff yourself so small
to his right side inside the sleeping bag shaped like whale hide
and he says this is the gal for me under cold breath,
you don’t point out the obvious in the space where you go to not be found.
You wait for your turn to whisper, for the ice to melt, for another snow to fall
with grace so that once again the ground will be covered by a pulp
detective story, early rising phantoms disturbing the white with patient leather
heels. Who stepped here before me,
you will wonder as if the silhouette that fit
the tidy prints might have been your twin
on the moon. You’ll wonder if she would catch your hand if you fell
ill with nostalgia for gravity’s pull. You’d wander
in her honest footing’s wake, following her shoes to the ends of some earth
if it meant their tender guidance up the mica embroidered paths of homes
when you know plainly, there is no home.
Lower Pennsylvanians
There’s a barbeque after every Flat Earth Society meeting.
The sponsoring professor provides the bulk of the atlases,
but members bring plastic
globes that melt easily, road maps through Saskatchewan that they lost
themselves on last July. They soak it all in black honey and light
a match after saying a few bruised words about Galileo. They pick
regulation sized spines from their teeth under the shade of an eclipse
and gentle fireside conversation. According to the math of flatness,
I am exactly where I'm supposed to be
and so are you—
24,901 miles to the left of me, just right.
The Apologizer/Good Poem
Yes, I am in love with popular music from England,
even at night from that shy state of the hunted, hidden
between the lines separating church and our prayerless parts.
I’ve mourned the passing of Damon Albarn’s MTV face
into middle age. I’ve spent some time crying,
the silver infection of his sideburns spread, a rotted strawberry jam
growing fur and complicated
teeth. Despite having eaten ghost meat in the chapel of never scared,
our mouths fill with trembles we can’t fix, his something haunted
that no longer fits the blond harp
or a bad word his professional mother was paid to ignore
when she placed a plate of wilted pancakes in front of him
at his assigned seat in front of you.
The arms of maple leaves coated his throat then, the chords
strummed by nymphets no one makes up. Believe
in the year of the hair
belonging to scrawny island kids, intravenously nourished
in the years when heroines and thieves
of rave knowledge performed miracles on Debussy’s dead body. Don’t be surprised
if you feel nothing on the bare back
of a horse navigating the coastal octopus traps just out of reach
of the Pacific’s curled fingers. You have the right to be unsettled
by the sun calming down, the colors of opium uncut
caught in the bright skin of the sky. You don’t have to be moved
nine degrees away from the equator,
the closest you’ve ever been to God. It’s okay
if something matters more.
by Tyler Bigney
Knife or Hammer
The first job I ever had
was on a little farm
where I lifted bails of hay
and stuck suction cups
to cows udders
to drive out the milk.
I worked hard – from morning till night
The farmer noticed it, and it
wasn’t long until he took me aside
and told me that I was his new
right hand man.
The next day when I came to work,
there was a little red haired
freckled face boy lifting those bails
of hay and sticking those suction cups
to the cows. And I smiled, quietly
mocking him under my breath.
Across the green fields,
the farmer led me to a little barn.
He opened the door
and guided me inside.
“Watch your step,” he said.
“What is this place?”
“You ever eat veal?”
“No.”
“You’ll see then.”
With a flashlight he led me down
a short, dirt floored hall
and stopped in front of a closed door.
He looked at me
before pushing it open
and shone the flashlight
across the room. There, with their feet tied,
and laying down on their sides,
were rows of baby cows.
“Helps keep the meat tender
with them down on their sides like that,”
he said. “They can’t move.”
I just nodded.
Together, we untied their feet
and led one of them down
that dirt floored hall to another room.
“Do you want to knife or hammer,” he asked.
“Hammer,” I whispered.
He passed me the mallet.
“Hit it over the head as hard as you can.”
“Okay,” I nodded.
He held the baby cow
and I swung the hammer.
He took the knife
slit its throat
and then hung it up
to bleed it dry.
My promotion ended there
and the little red haired freckle faced boy
got the job and I went back to
slinging bails of hay
and milking the cows,
always watching from a distance
as the farmer led the boy into the barn
and watching as the boy came out
half hour later,
covered in blood and smiling
from ear to ear, telling me
it was a much better job than mine.
“Were you the knife
or were you the hammer,” he asked.
“Hammer,” I said.
With the blood still wet
on his shirt,
there was no use in me
returning his question.
The night I went crazy is
the night I had too much to drink,
and walked across the street
and preached to the cops about
their god and their guns.
They didn’t listen, but they
moved quick and weren’t long
tossing me into the back of the cop car.
And instead of driving me to the police station,
they drove me to the hospital,
where they flushed my insides
and stuck me in a room for two weeks
where I talked aloud to myself
and saw my parent’s every couple of days.
They looked at me different,
well, at least my mother did. My father
would look the other way, or at the ceiling
or out the window. And when I spoke he
only whispered.
The nurses were nice, they fed me toast
with cheese whiz, and walked me across the
street on the week-ends to some fast food restaurant.
Other times they sat at the foot of my bed
and just talked.
The day before my release, they took me
to the bathroom and asked me to lift my head up
and look myself in the mirror. I couldn’t. I stared
down at my feet. When they asked why, I could
only shrug my shoulders and wait
until they left.
You see, I’ve always been stubborn
and scared to admit,
that when I looked at myself
in the mirror,
I didn’t see anything at all.
We painted the kitchen ceiling sky blue,
the walls a lime green. Later,
we went out to the back porch,
drank Greek beer and smoked the cigarettes
I brought back with me from Russia.
The stars peeked out-
the north star first
and the others followed
shortly after.
I pointed out the Big Dipper
and you nodded.
It was quiet -
black space and the crickets.
The sounds of the television
poured out the window –
the 11 o’clock news
where a man in a town I’ve never been
died while jumping into a man hole
to save a baby. The baby is alright –
she’s at the hospital overnight
for precautionary reasons
and the man, while dead,
is tonight’s hero.
Praying
Moved to Beijing
-
Fell asleep on the red eye
next to an old man
who wasn’t scared of dying.
She met me at the airport
wearing shiny black flats
and a purple dress that fell
gracelessly below her knee.
That night she whispered
she once breathed North Korean air
and bowed down to the leader
the same man who killed her father
the same man who sent her mother
and her sisters to the camp
where they worked you until
your fingers melt and your heart stops.
We laid awake
as she ran her malnourished fingers
over my body and promised that no more
would my heart be a stranger.
I nodded my haunted head
and blinked my eyes,
never losing sight of her crooked toenails
that I painted cobalt blue the night before
while she stared at the picture
and prayed (very softly)
and I prayed too (silently)
but it never occurred to me
until I started to write this poem
many years later
that we were praying
for entirely different reasons.
After Bishop: 13 Steps,
W/ Projection & Blarney
This is the bulwark of sane.
And a scrivener with an Irish name, who bangs
on the bulwark of sane.
Here is a drawer, full of doilies and lapsed
'scriptions, made out to the man with
an Irish name, who bangs on the
bulwark of sane.
Slippery runners, built into frames
of the drawer holding medications,
diaries and more, -- belonging to a
man with an Irish name, banging,
banging on the bulwark
of sane.
Fifty odd
summers, spent like slippery
runners, built into the frame
of drawers, ancient claims:
for Xanax
and pharmaceutical
cocaine, shot into the
veins of a writer with Irish
names, banging, banging
on the bulwark
of sane.
Here's the end
of a 50-ish summer
for the slippery man,
sober now yet
still a runner --
adjusting to the frames
of change, (Plavix, Celebrex,
abstain, maintain)
inherent to the dude with an Irish
name, who bangs on the bulwark,
the bulwark of sane.
And summer is the hum
of fifty bi planes, strung
across slippery horizon
wide frames, a sky writer spelling
out Big Pharma names, well known
to the punter with an Irish
brain, banging,
banging on the
bulwark of sane.
An accretion like adultery,
or addicts flying summer;
add to this a drummer:
50 rhythms in exchange
for a bridle of sky, cumulus
lips in a frame;
ingrained like a new brand
of pharmaceutical name,
known variously
to the scrivener with Irish
veins, banging
like John Bonham
on bulwarks
of sane.
Came as a reckoning
from TV's Law and Order --strange bang,
two times 50
frames, a metallic cough
from ground-pounding bi planes
with no jet stream left
to sky-write
a name,
nor a memory of white lines,
recovery from cocaine ... shudder
went the heart
of a lad with
Gaelic shame,
playing para-
diddles on the
bulwark of sane.
Some tense Maguffin
of Law and Order
--disparate, desperate
frame after frame,
a drummer boy gunning
the ground-war planes,
strafing
slippery, ever-changing
plains
of the poet who abstains
from shooting
cocaine, yet spins
a black circle
of Irish shame, banging,
banging on bulwarks
of sane.
11th Hour, of a Season
of Order, some desperate drummer
pounding astral planes, shapeshifting
slippery corporeal domains;
as a smoke noose
from a loosely
strung frame.
What remedy?
What juice?
What's left in a name? Irish-ly
adamant, banging
bulwarks of sane.
Temporal shifts, of tense
and aspect, faraway sputtering
departures
from Order ...
skin-popping pilots, drum-
drummed the ashes,
as if to etch
charcoal frames -- black
border, black border.
Six foot four, unpronounceable
name, and look! -- he's gone
into that crouch again:
about to christen
culvert,
no champagne...
Unbreakable
empty, banging
bulwarks of sane.
You Gotta Live it to Play it Right
by K. Keith
Dim, the stagnant booze-air clears;
thick velvety curtain lifts,
reveals
a not-so-grand
piano, scarred and dilapidated
under a single, cutting beam.
On the bench, the wrung-out crust
of a moth-eaten man
slumps habitually, his spine in a “C”
from the shouldered shackles
of negative meaning. Void.
He weighs the crackled keys
with weathered fingers; arthritically
knobbled notes float into the open air
hung with single malt fumes,
contained in vacuous walls.
Each hobbled finger-stroke and hammer-fall
morphs
melts
molds into agonizing chords, aching arpeggios.
Audible heaviness.
His oddly-angled fingers
abstain from all accountability
for the throb in his injured melody,
punctuated now and again by a dead note
on that neglect-yellow keyboard.
Longing plunks minored
on a downbeat, a song woven with
losing the blue of cloudless mornings
in her velvet passions. The her that’s missing,
that’s gone and packed the dog
and any solace against the pervasive storms
graying his vision, his beard, his hand—
mangled with grief and apologies—his hand
ever grasping for that lost shade
and the irony of intonating the only hue
his notes will ever know.
(Visit our Art Page for visual stimulation from WIlliam Hicks)
Base 1
Addition is not my forte
Subtraction and anything over base 1
is difficult for me.
Can’t find two socks
that match
Can’t find the right job
Or the right partner
Twos, I’ve never been good at
Threes and fours neither
Mostly ones I’m good at.
I Chat
I chat with a bus
driver while awaiting
a CTA bus
that is later
than usual
though
we have a good relationship
me and the bus
I ride it
everywhere
everyday
to work
and back
and shopping
and home
My friends
don’t ride it anymore
not since
they got their
girlfriends
and
first cars
with money
they got from
parents
for cars
and college
My First Encounter with a Few Good Ole Boys
You say the snakes round here
ain’t got no danger.
You even get close enough
to pry open their mouths
with forefinger and thumb,
but you tell me that you
shoot them in the backs of their
pink, fleshy throats anyway.
In Today’s News: A Blow Up Doll Stands in for Groom
People come here
to watch people.
I watch people watching
other people. A man
with smooth, black skin
wears vintage-green leather,
peers out from gold, round frames
at two girls who want to be
“alternative,” but shop at the mall,
tote gold-sequined purses,
drink caramel macchiatos.
We make eye contact,
him and I. And aware
that we've been caught
we quickly turn away.
Free Coffeeshop News
I pick a stool near the window with parking lot view to enjoy a frozen yogurt parfait. The boy who delivers Free Coffeeshop News enters to switch out the papers in the stand next to my seat, creating one of those badly timed awkward moments, and being that people think themselves so clever, breaks the silence with a rhetorical is that for me? I smile and remain silent. When I catch him watching me get into my fuel-efficient midsize car, license plate unchanged, bumper sticker that reads Stop Bitching, Start a Revolution, I know exactly what he’s thinking before he shakes his head and calls me a damn Yankee.
by Ricky Garni
Stubby's Lounge
Every time somebody new walks into the bar, they ask the same question. Where’s Stubby?
Where’s Stubby? They ask the guy behind the bar.
Where’s Stubby?
Every time the guy behind the bar says I don’t know. Or He’ll be back soon. Or I think he’s in the can. Or He overdid it a little last night and won’t be in for a while. Or why don’t you ask his wife. Or he’s at his wife’s funeral. Or he’s dead.
This guy is big and strong looking and has beautiful blue eyes and dark wavy hair. His teeth are pearly. His biceps are Shazamish.
He’s Stubby.
Of everybody that comes into Stubby’s, nobody could look less like Stubby than Stubby. In fact, everybody that comes into Stubby’s is more stubby than Stubby. That’s why he calls himself Stubby. That’s Stubby for you. Really. A swell guy.
A new guy just came in a few minutes ago. Now he looks up from his stubby drink. Is Stubby really dead? That’s a shame he says. And Stubby agrees. It’s a real shame.
Everybody gets kind of quiet. Stubby hates it when everybody is quiet.
LAST CALL! Stubby says. That gets things going. And all the stubbys come up to buy a drink and to give a toast to Stubby. Stubby pours a little drink, too. TO STUBBY! They all say. TO STUBBY, IT’S TOO BAD AND EVERYTHING! It’s not a great toast at all, but Stubby likes it very much. So Stubby takes a drink. His drink tastes funny.
Last Wishes
I would like to have sex
with a dozen people
one after the other after
the other and then open
a book of poetry by
Longfellow, read one poem
and then simply expire
Actually
Make it hundreds of people
one after the other after the other
after the other after the other
after the other after the other
after the other after the other
after the other after the other
after the other after the other
and so on and so forth
after the other and not read
any Longfellow at all! Why
should I read Longfellow? And
after I don’t read Longfellow,
keep going. And then not die.
Why should I die? And then
keep going, one after the other,
after the other after the other,
after the other none of whom
read Longfellow themselves
and not reading
Longfellow myself
and not dying either.