His daughter doesn't look very much like him.
She doesn't look very much like anyone, to tell you the truth.
She just sort of appeared one day
while a friend and I were throwing darts.
She didn't look like me at all,
but then, she didn't look like anyone.
I left without saying a word to her.
She was too big to risk being funny with.
Kids that age have pristine memories.
She is his daughter now
and it's just as well;
she never did (look a thing) like me.
Sworn to uphold,
I float in with the tide.
A fellow screams.
He’s been stung, he says.
I piss on myself
and write him a poem
about how I wished I had been there.
I am a thing.
Useless as the words used to relay it.
Useless as the need to explain it.
Me. A Thing. To You.
You.
Nursing your jellyfish wound.
(I really wish I could have been there)
It takes a present desk
(a future barricade)
to shovel me back to a past no further
than a willing spade
and half-hearted toss.
Back
to the curious birthplace
of my gray-sexual imagination.
I am uprooted and turned over
like an introduction
written by someone
not on the exam. I am
packed tightly inside bottles
(all of which are missing bottoms)
and set adrift without arms
to find you.
...and the loneliness will melt, they said
and the shadows you ask daily
for pardon and permission
will be cast by the erection
of happiness.
"Everything disgusts me a little bit"
"What do you mean?" he put his phone back in his pocket
and tried to disguise the reluctance in his face.
After all, this was the other half of fucking.
"I mean everything. Look-" I pointed up the trail
at a young woman walking with her toddler.
"that woman there, do you see her?
Why would you walk with your kid on the side of the fucking river?
Why wouldn't you make the kid walk right in front of you
where you could keep an eye on him and make sure he doesn't get clipped
by a biker or fall down the goddamn hill?"
He feigned comprehension and leaned back on the bench.
"I guess not everybody is as logical as you, Brit."
I hated when he said things like that.
His jeans and sandals offended me more than the woman,
but I kept that part to myself.
After all, this was the other half of fucking.
I didn't like the look on his face when he said it.
He had long since lost the body to be smug
and the dog hairs coating his black sleeveless shirt
were shiny enough that I could see myself
recoiling in them.
His question splayed out
over his flushed palms and bored lips
and I knew very well that he didn't want
an estimate.
He wanted a number.
Wet, spread and exact.
"19", I said.
I've written "19" about you.
My lolli-eyed friend leaned closer to his monitor,
trailing his index finger beneath my words
as though he were reading instructions.
He made tiny spirals as his eyes jumped ahead
to the next title and the next title and the next.
"Don't you write about anything else?" he asked.
I stared straight up into the ceiling fan
and followed a pale green blob on one of the blades.
I wondered if it was supposed to be a planet.
I wondered if it glowed in the dark.
"What else is there?"
He stood up and walked over me
so that I caught a quick glimpse up his khaki shorts.
I heard him open up the fridge and pop something in the microwave.
Almost harmoniously with the droning machine,
the birth of a complaint began stirring nearby.
He stopped the microwave after a few seconds
and I suddenly lost all interest in the answer.
If only the body stayed as lean as the mind
and each new fact and definition
took some chunk out of my thighs
If only I had done it
really done it, I mean
if I had just gotten over it
and gotten under it
I wonder
Distance shouldn't be so distant
heights shouldn't be so high
if it wasn't and it weren't
and I could travel just by wanting
then I could prove it to you
and come back in time
to talk about the
other stuff.
The kid's dad was Jewish.
That's why he had light brown curly hair.
Kid had never seen me before in his eight months on earth
and yet
all I had to do was smirk at the kid
and his big stupid mexican brown eyes
got as big
as I imagine his fist must look to him.
He reached for me.
His fat baby breathing sped up
and he did his mouth the way all babies do
when they want to lay one on you.
I'd never seen the kid before in my twenty-six years on earth
and yet
all he had to do was give me that Buddy Hackett smile
and my heart grew as warm
as the shower I took afterward
to get my singularity out of my head.
They keep it very cold in the house.
My Wella never really complains about it,
but she stays bundled up with thick socks
and heavy blankets.
Her eyes lit up when I walked into the room
and she gave me a good strong hug.
She didn't say my name, though.
She hasn't said my name in a very long time.
My Wella took my left hand and smiled.
In her sweet and slow voice, she asked,
"Oooh, how is married life, mija?"
She was beaming but her eyes, still staring at my hand,
seemed to drift in and out of focus.
"It's fine, Wella. Everything is fine."
"Gooood, mija" she said, patting my hand
and looking down to her own.
She couldn't remember what was bothering her
and I knew better than to say what.
coincidence
chews on pens
snarls at home life
tickles ribs
it’s all anything
ever is
everything happens just so
it happens everything
just so happens it
happens so everything
just so(rta)
happens
you and I?
we owe our lives to the strangeness
or maybe we don’t
I’ve got a busted pen,
who fucking knows?
we’ve got jagged teeth
they fucking know.
you’ve cracked yourself up
the laughter is contagious
coincidence
that’s all anything
ever is.
he stands firm against the current
carrying thirty-somethings downstream
where sex means gender
means locked doors
means offspring
his shoulders carry the weight
of the world beneath his waist
while his hands nervously grasp
at the new meanings
of Swells
his body is strong but the young girls take note
of every inch the rushing months
force him back (and forth, and back)
his sandpaper hangups
have been smoothed into glass
and I wonder how long
before his Anchor can see through him
I am the center.
My dad gave my brother a bat when he was little.
It was of decent size and had good weight to it,
especially to be giving to a 10 year old.
He had hoped that my brother would take an interest in sports
but all he wanted to do was squish cockroaches with it.
I'll have to wash my hands.
He takes several steps back, towards the front door.
His palms are visible and his face
is so goddamned stupid.
"You're scaring me."
My brother never hit a baseball in his life.
Just killed bug after unlucky bug,
tossing them up and swatting them midair,
wishing to God they Were baseballs.
It wouldn't take a very big swing to crush a ball...
"Would it?"
"Would it what?"
His back is against the door.
"You never fucking listen when I talk."
We've sacrificed our False Witnesses,
wrapped them, stitch by Slant-eyed Stitch,
too snug to point out
the Democrat in the room.
It's quite the Bind we find ourselves in.
My Naive fantasies... Your Learned heart...
We are Choking the Index in Berry Blue Two.
Such a Simple thing to say,
"Close the gap, relax, and the cuffs will slip off."
Permission to imagine mercury I can taste!
A fond tune I can carry on my Polar Cap lips:
Close the Gap.
Relax.
And our hands will fall free.
Leftover verses from sunken ships
hang heavy in the air.
Swollen oaths.
Beached scales.
Bits of slow-growing coal
turning reflective in our hands.
It's here that we've buried
those old names,
those loose lips.
And it's here that we'll die,
anonymous.
It was me, this time.
Unzipping my pants,
closing my eyes,
letting an uninspired hand
reach in and drag my heart out.
Kicking and screaming
like a newborn I just Couldn't Keep.
It was me who severed the quivering cord,
the link that bound us
from such a great distance.
That Link, precious tunnel,
underneath our eyes
and above what we thought was impossible to see.
It was me that chewed until it tore in two,
and for what?
Because the fear of an empty church
singing static We Hardly Knew You's
around an even Emptier casket was enough to have me
Cooing to what I already know
is suffering.
The mind can be so naive.
Believing that two souls, born so far apart,
could ever have anything tangible to do with each other.
Dreaming of those first spoken words,
that first touch,
"would I have to tiptoe to reach his lips?"
I can be so goddamn selfish.
Why should this man be Only for me?
What have I got to offer Anybody,
let alone a man so beautifully crafted?
Nothing.
Not one lousy thing.
He deserves to find what I've been depriving him of.
A monster, I am.
A goddamn selfish monster.
Like the fading high of a Sunday morning
or a movie I've seen a thousand times,
you've become very much
like an aging slump of inside-out left socks,
a bad joke about ladders,
a look that says, "do we have to?"
And as more and more dated hazards fall,
I find I don't even wonder where you are anymore.
I can (safely) assume you've got copper breath
in the middle of a rotating club,
proving to them, but mostly to yourself
that you are still quite
"the young man".
Struggling not to have a good time
while keeping your right hand downright frozen.
I've convinced myself that I love you less
and "absence"
has done nothing of the sort.
I can hear them
swarming above my head
like locusts on Dollar Harvests
(Quiche slows them down a bit)
I hear Crying and Screaming
from the ReRe-Sung protesters
dipping their dirty blushers
into the Periodic Pool.
I can hear all of this
above my head
but I'm not there.
Not today.
I am the keeper of Hives
and 2 dollar toys, today.
Over-priced backpacks
and the whole Kirkland Spring.
So if Purell is how I'm going
to pass my time
then the fun comes in guessing
where the other .01% went.
Gurgling in my throat
is an overdue utterance
curdled with time
and not even close to being logical.
What I want to say
has no place with either of us.
Where I've declared home
and heart...
Where the reflection comes off my left hand
and thwaps the curious others.
What I want to say
has nothing to do
with you and I.
The doctor's cold finger
or dog braving the road
doesn't even come close
to how unprepared
my speech is.
So squinch your nose
and pull those ears back.
Silence those soup coolers
and let me begin.
I keep myself in earshot
like an untrusting mutt walking his human to the bus stop.
I keep my eyes wide
just in case.
When they are threatened,
my tiny hands become tinier fists
and I am ready to hit
Anything.
I can't protect them from everything.
The razor sharp paper's edge.
The Accuser inadvertently blaming the eye.
The occupied bathroom stall.
I can't protect them from everything.
In all actuality,
I can't protect them from Anything.
The Magilla hogging 4 Square.
The lying "downstairs neighbor".
The various sex demons of formality.
I am the wire-hanger white trash passerby
regarding the size of the fight in her tiny dog.
I am a rubber band-less David.
A defenseless Vagina.
All the same,
I swear I'd die
trying to keep them safe.
You!
Who so prize your own crooked tongues
that a price be made
on all who accept them,
why does your collective utterance
not resonate?
Like one who cries in the pit of space,
your great boastings fall on empty auditoriums
producing no semblance of echo or absorption.
Truly, I say to you
relinquish that False promise held high!
So many pause at your invented beacon,
and I, too, stared dumbly at its proper course.
But in Good Grace was I given perception beyond
the mirrored images magnifying the shadows of all that crawl
and your leger de main became like a child's reasoning.
Oh Stubborn tower of imagined business!
Your walls stand above the eyes of men
but I say to them, "Look past this vulgar display
and see the rotting core!"
Then this be the last warning I send into the sky:
Produce fruit from those insentient salesmen,
or be cast into deafening doomsday read-through!
A mustard seed fell at the foot of a great mountain.
The mountain teased the seed
saying,
"There's a lot riding on you."
Months went by
and neither object moved.
The mountain continued to pester the seed,
"How many people are you planning to let down?"
Finally, when the seed decided it had had enough,
he shouted,
"I'll show you what I can do!"
But before he could move
a bird came and took him
while the mountain sat
laughing
and laughing.
An angel appeared and said with great cheer,
"Come!
Join us!"
and pointed to a crowd;
millions of ghosts cloaked in white robes
bowing their crowned heads forever and ever.
"Join us!"
A Call to Arms is what the crowd bellowed
when in the night they came for blameless souls
and among them not one I claimed to know
my eyes stayed low while one did count the most
"You sir!" "You sir!" Come one come all!
You innocents answer the call!
For to the world you did not fall!
"You sir!" "You sir!" Come one come all!
I shuffled near the thinner crowd and wo
not one I knew and I did find it so
peculiar I stood before them, oh
my seed among the rocky soil sown
"You there! Girl! Appear before the stand!"
The crowd then split and left me heart in hand
Slowly I walked toward the monstrous band...
"Girl, you lack the shine of these"
He pointed out for me to see
the thinning crowd beneath the trees
"Narrow this gate and broad you be."
And in that moment my life froze
a recount of my life's past woes
of every time my God proposed
and to the sky I'd turned my nose
"Girl, you lack the shine of these.
Dirty mocks of righteous deeds.
A life lived among the unclean.
Narrow this gate and broad you be."