Emily and June

We were holding her then,

But nothing was holding her.

I saw the head bend to fit through the opening.

That's the way it had been engineered, but I never knew.

My mother had her left leg

I had the right, pushing against the bottom of her foot.

We were a doorway, the three of us,

Come through, now, come through.

I looked mostly at her face.

Even in her pain her brow was knowing.

And around her eyes there was a stillness,

There was something old in her, something sublime.

She bore down in the usual way and then it happened.

We saw who we instantly knew,

Our new girl and right away she was one of us.

Right away.

Stage Fright

There is a bird inside my chest.
A hawk in a parakeet cage.
He is trapped in there together with all the bird-related cliches and idioms ever invented.
He is broken into unnatural angles.
Beating, beating.
Railing against my rib cage.
Nothing will soothe him except his being obvious to everyone.
Look at these ratty feathers, these beady eyes.
Look at these ravaged wings and their reflex for flight
that has become only a painful scraping.

20 October 2011

I keep my tiny money in a big bank,
And I know there are people raving in the streets.
The big banks are greedy and evil.
They are ruining everything from balconies with monocles and cigars.
But I'm in love with the bank teller.
She is a young black girl that wears her hair like my grandmother did in the '60's.
Short in the back with an elegant, voluminous s w o o p on top.
She has a scar on her chest that I always think is a tiger's eye pendant.
And I stare at it unabashedly at first then raise my gaze apologetically to hers.
Her eyes are quiet, kind, and sad.
When she calls me by name I can feel my tongue filling up my mouth.
And the big banks of the world are ridiculous.

28 August 2011

At the two-year mark, my love is at a place where my language starts to break down. The feeling I have is strong and deep, but it's also very simple. It doesn't have any reservations or conditions or conflicts of interest. It doesn't need to justify itself by the overuse of adjectives, ornate verbosity or ruffles. This love is a flat, cool, blue thing like a calm river or sky. It lies at the base and at the ceiling of my days and moves them along with a quiet constancy.

What would I have done otherwise? Maybe my nervous system would have short-circuited. Maybe I would have grown hard and jaded. Those were real fears for me once, but here I am. My heart as soft as a flower and my eyes are open.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It's your very skeleton I love, dear.
The honesty in your gait,
The frank way your hands fall at your sides.
The earnest curve of your skull into your brow and then jaw.

I let my eyes fall
Into the places where you are most yourself
I am going to stay there forever
In the slopes and valleys of your bones.

27 August 2011

While making love, I knocked a bowl of strawberries off the night stand.

A mosquito stung my nose while I was taking a bath,
I slapped him into the water and bathed with him, dead.

I went to sleep and dreamt of a wall of water, hare krishnas, and a hanged man.

A full moon. A hurricane.

The rain, the rain, the rain.

The dams will break and wash the symbolism off everything so we can see what's what.

19 August 2011

Menstruation Questions and Answers

What does it feel like?

Two clenched fists right inside your hip joints.

Why do you cry when it happens?

Because it marks the passing of time.

Who do you blame?

Myself.

Why is this necessary?

I don't know.

31 July 2011

She has the face of someone who will die young.
(Spending all day with children, you're suspended in a place that's not your own. A hazy memory place.)

She has the face of someone who will die young.
(They trapped me in their childhoods. A shadow figure in an apron with an outdated hairstyle.)

She has the face of someone who will die young.
(I am shoes on linoleum. A cigarette lighter. A cheap pocketbook.)

She has the face of someone who will die young.
(I am a source. A history. They remember the hollows of my face. The outline of my profile.)

She has the face of someone who will die young.
(They started to remember me while I was still alive. They murdered me with their reverence. Now they finger my rings and eyeglasses like relics.)

She has the face of someone who will die young.
(Pose me with my hand over my eyes, shielding them from the sun. Position me with my face in the light but obscured.)

20 July 2011

When the spirit breaks,
That's when the crying stops.
Your thoughts are only an asterisk above your head.

In that moment you are aware of your whole body.
You can feel all the way
From the outside of your belly,
To the inside of your spine.
You know there ought to be blood and guts between,
but instead there is only a stale, green air.

Before the spirit breaks
It looks like a slat from a Venetian blind.
After, if looks like one broken up
In sections of various lengths.
Or after a while
It looks like that.

It happened to me,
And I'm still alive.
But I can always hear its rattling around in there
As I walk to and fro.

13 July 2011

Yesterday I saw my potential passing me on the highway.
Smoking.
It gave me the finger as it went by.

Once I saw my potential in an alley behind a bar eating out of a trashcan.
It barfed on my shoes and I looked at it with the disgust and it just laughed at me.
"I hate you, you asshole," I told it.

Another time my potential called me in the middle of the night trying to get me to loan it money.
It went, "Blah, blah, blah, anyway so I'm really hurting, I'll pay you back later, I swear."
I was like, "Fuck you, you lazy dickhead some people actually work for a living. You should try it sometime. Click."

Somebody who's seen my potential naked recently told me that it got a really shitty tattoo on its ass. They told me it looked really cheap.

So what am I supposed to do when people ask me about it? I just have to stand there looking ashamed.

Sometimes it emails me gross pictures of diseased genitals.

I still secretly love it though.

23 April 2011

Today is the day before Easter. Emily called me in the morning. I was hungover.

She, Seth, Hank, and I went to DelBuono's Bakery to get rolls for Easter dinner at mom's.

When you walk into the bakery, the smell hangs there, glorious. There is a huge oven at the back of the shop and fresh rolls come out and slide down an inclined plane onto a conveyor belt.

People reach out and grab the hot rolls and stuff them into bags then go pay for them.

Over the oven is a big sign, "DelBuono's Bakery: Friend of the Working Man."

Emily was standing off to the side with Hank on her hip. Seth and I were grabbing at rolls and filling our bags. Hank was wearing a dinosaur hat, green and orange. The head from his dinosaur costume.

Here is a scene I will remember all my life. That smell. The hotness of rolls in my hands. My beautiful nephew. My sister. The rustling of bags. The people inching up behind me in line. "Friend of the working man."

I saw it all as though I were dying. As if I were looking back on this moment from a time far in the future. All the rustic sensuality of it. All of us healthy. Hank still small enough to be carried. Me and the people I love and this ancient, simple action: taking hot bread fresh from the oven.

My heart was open and my gratitude complete.

There are still things in this world that are true. Never despair. DelBuono's bakery.

Filthy Limericks

Michelangelo's statue of David,
Has a body that many have crave'd
But getting a bone
For a guy made of stone
Is something that's really deprave'd

Every horse has a really big phallus
But they're twenty times larger in Dallas
When a horse walks around
Its dick drags on the ground
Until it develops a callous

Renee's giant breasts wouldn't let her
Fit into a regular sweater
So she cut two big holes
For her large areole's
And then after that she felt better.

At first Jack was weak in the knees
When he had an affair with Louise
He was filled with desire
And his heart was afire
But now it just burns when he pees.

Mr. Dimple was destined for porn
He was blessed with a fourteen inch horn
Though the ladies would quake
When he unrolled his snake
He would say, "That's the way I was born!"

A magician who thought he was slick
Went up to an innocent chick
He said, "Baby, come here,
Watch my dick disappear."
She thought that was an excellent trick.

You know that I'd bet my last nickel
That the long arctic winters are fickle
So a polar bear's hair
Is the thickest down there
So he doesn't end up with a dick-sicle.

The large hairless scrotum of Davey
Was quite a surprise for his lady
It gave her a start
When his legs came apart
Cause she thought he was having a baby

I know of this lady, Lucille
Who has twenty-nine boobies to feel
Plus, her mouth is replaced
By a twat on her face
So I guess you could say she's ideal

In Virgina a lot of the misters
Will have intercourse with their sisters
They believe if a man
Goes outside of his clan
That his penis may break out in blisters

Bill's sweetheart was late getting in
And she wore a small secretive grin
Then he put in his thumb
And pulled out a plumb
And cried, "Darling, where have you been?"

Each morning Mike's wife always begs
That he go down and lick 'tween her legs
But he doesn't mind
He says yes every time
He prefers it to bacon and eggs.

Mort met a girl who was shrewish
She ran off when their love was still newish
He didn't realize
She abhorred his small size
He thought it was cause he was Jewish.