Story

Once upon a time there was a face
In the clouds, I saw it there, Picasso lips
And eyes like dinner plates, newly washed.

Drain

Drain me like a bathtub,
dirty water and suds, wash the stench from
my hair, I don’t care,
scrub me raw.
Shocking, isn’t it? Like broken eggs on the floor,
when they begin to sizzle,
When your grandmother gives you a cigarette,
When some kid spits in your face.
Check your messages, its all there,
meandering tape, scramble the voices,
Lavender soap from your mother’s shower,
pick up the dry cleaning.
Come back here young man,
I’m talking to you.

ChinaPond (july)

You there, across the lake
Can you see?
Are you looking out your gigantic picture window?
Do you see her, a pinpoint,
There on the end of the dock
Standing next to the yellow banana
Of an overturned kayak, the girl
In a black bikini, red popsicle
Dripping down her right elbow.
The light is eerie, the rain sweet and soft
The sky rolls syllables around in his mouth,
Trying to decide what to say
To the east, the sky flashes occasionally with far-off lightning.
When she was little, the girl
Used to think of metaphors for these storms,
God is angry, angels are crying.
Now she does not care about the emotions
of celestial beings,
she is merely enjoying the overlapping ringlets
on the pewter surface of the water,
the surprised “o”s that the droplets
make when they land in the water.
She is slightly sunburned,
freckles dot her nose and cheeks.
She is letting the rain roll down her back,
Bead up on her calves

Pringles

In the back of the station wagon
they ate Sour Cream and Onion Pringles.
The salt burned the corners
of their smiles.

Soulmate

Sometimes, late at night,
she would whisper stories to the star-shaped pillow
beneath her head
by the glow of a lone streetlight.
She thought that she would be an ideal person
to share a bed with:
quiet, still, warm.
And good at telling stories.

Strip My Mind

When all that was left
were the tiny tack-holes in the wall,
he smiled her and said
Now we can begin.

Tainted Love

That night she dreamt
of a man of water, transparent and moving,
impossibly tall
And she loved him powerfully
And when she woke she found herself
frightened of the day,
grasping at nothing.

Lost

When Little Bo Peep
dialed 9-1-1
she felt a little silly.
But honestly-
who else will help her?

Hunger

He would always smell to her
Of the floury hunger that seemed to hover in the air
Of the pizza restaurant.

I Still Fail to Understand

She was polka dots and iced cinnamon buns,
She was red silk bras and silver high top sneakers.
And every morning when she woke, the world was hers to take
and all the kings horses and all the kings men
fell every night madly in love with her again.