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I love good food.  I love to cook and am pretty good at it.  But I’ve always been afraid of baking bread.

First of all, the nature of yeast is confounding.  Animal?  Vegetable?  Sea monkey?  We didn’t do much real baking at our house, so the yeast packets were written in Aramaic.  This should’ve been the first indicator of death, but who thinks about little grains of stinky sand as being alive in the first place?  Even if the leavening was hale and hearty, I worried about the exact temperature of lukewarm.  FYI, there is no ‘lukewarm’ indicator on a baby thermometer, which was older than me and probably didn’t work anyway.  Proofing?  Strange little verb.  Chances are, I either cooked the rascals before they could start farting into my dough, or froze their non-existent nuts off. Read more

Translucent will.
We wear the salted melon
freshly green
its nakedness is younger
than killing but
older than joy.

It stares back, will.
It smiles at you there, wild
your star is too
liquid and ferocious to
do any good.
Its feverful growl seeps
and devours the
hard question of me.

Patient will.
In your business of
bleeding
and scorching
down my mountain side
eating everything in your
path and wake, cutting
great swaths in my greenness.

So patient, will
and persistent, green.

And he
dug under my nails
knew my secrets
could smell me

It seemed
important
[necessary that it remain impossible]
cellular, genetic

And I
relucted
recanted
resisted
resigned
reveled

And he
relied on
lied
was lied to
forgave
crumbled

So we
danced through hell
made a mess
tried to excuse
barely survived

While she
held on for dear life
won

An impossibly blonde Jesus steps
up to the Mudville plate
swinging his turnkey providence
knocking Calvary from his cleats

Rowdy boosters spill cola, rend their clothes,
shout in mysterious licorice tongues for this
unspeakable congress with the
sacred slugger

The pitcher wears an emerald snake
around her arm
she shakes off a sign or two
ignoring first the locusts, then
the burning bush
opting for the inside curve

Jesus mutters something pithy
to the squatter, blessing and
assuring him that his services
won’t be needed, as
this one’s going outta the park

But, caught in Magdalene’s wind-up
her shiver, her twist, her magical shibboleth
scored by tiny brass ankle bells singing
fire into his brain
he swings…

…high and inside

==========

Originally published in The Cortland Review, Issue 4

From the relative protection of
a shared bus stop
at least the sky wasn’t
quite so low inside, held
back by timid fluorescence
one lamp stutters apologetically
under the weight of all that winter.
She has lipstick on her teeth as

we trade smiles

that flickering fixture grin that we use
on strangers and
underlings; the one that says
beastly weather, please
don’t bother me

having sprayed my circle with
dialog repellent
up to my nose in
newspaper or novel
it’s inconceivable that
she’s talking to me
but unnerving to think otherwise

you can see she was pretty
once, for about five years
she’s passed that by another decade,
but still taunts her hair to the
same anti-Newtonian physics
Her lover was a bum, her
husband was the same and
the same
nothingness spurted from each and
found her purchase

Stars of rain and headlight
oscillate on the scratched Plexiglas.
The passing of each car
spotlighting her story
After the thread of twenty minutes
played out slow as existence
I watched myself get on the bus
in twenty years.

Beastly weather.
Where’s my horoscope.

What to say if you see me
thinking these things.
Are you peering between the bars
pulling up the scab with a stick
to see my pink
flesh, suddenly cool and rising
to defend itself against your eyes
the tongue of you worrying the
lost tooth hole of me

or did you wander in
to find me at the piano, still
wishing I could play
and stirring a sweaty glass;
bruised gin duking it out with the
index finger gestapo
attempting tragic

Maybe you googled me
after long not

did you hear me mention you in
that way we do
of something so important but
long not

in that way we do
of something so core to who we are
after long not
and so far from where we are

but maybe you didn’t stop.
Maybe I struck no chord at all, sour
or otherwise, as I indulged the
recall.  As I honored the desperate twinge
of a gone limb, still so sure of
its own existence; made welcome
the insatiable tickle that leads to madness.

Maybe it’s still winter with you, and
you don’t expect to see the sideshow of me
for some time to come, if ever.
The barker lets you leave in favor of the
easier mark, sniffing for blood on the wind.

evocative smoke
in his sad, brilliant when
with a lip for burned coffee
and insolent women.

There was the name I stole from you
and took with me all the way from
California, from Texas, to my wrist
like lavender oil, breathing
behind this picture window
in deep Ellington chords

There was the lie I told about my beauty
and how I held the lie up to myself
in the folded mirror like a swath, a bangle
for your perceived need and mine wounded
redemption spinning out a skein of strenuous
black calligraphy, oceanesque in
thick forgiveness

Then, of course, I covet. And I kill.
Covet the wonder reeling as delicate as
tiny spindles of branches, hard
as unrequited, soft as a mouth. I kill
reason and sense. Have buried them
with no remorse. Kissed their picture and
crossed myself, your myrrh on my fingertips.

I have something of yours.
I found it
    on the bathroom sink
    between the sheets
    waiting in the kitchen
    between pages
    in the blue satin box next
    to the bed where I keep
    my vibrators
    at the corner of my desk
    where I banged my knee
    at the bottom of a glass

It usually
    looks at me, quietly
    snores
    waits for a false move
    sulks, uncomfortable, like a
    late party guest
    clasps its hands behind
    pretends to be interested
    runs fingers over dusty shelves
    helps itself to a drink
    answers my phone
    opens my mail

Sometimes it
    becomes irritable
    demands free range cordon bleu
    wanders around ’til
    four in the morning
    changes stations, humming
    too much like high-tension power
    holds a knife to my throat, halfheartedly,
    rolling it’s eyes and sweating, only to
    forget why in the first place

I
    drive it around, trying
    to lull it to sleep.
    think it’s rather odd
    wonder about my health
    slip it a mickey
    try to treasure it as best I can
    wait for you to come get it

I have something of yours.
It signs my name and asks for you
and three hundred dollars and a
helicopter.

Come over me like a chill
climb up into my turret
Christ save us all from a death like this
Strange to me now are the forms I meet
that are not you.

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