1448 3 2
|
“Life is on life’s terms,” she told me once. Her arm, wrapped in clear cellophane, was freshly adorned with a green-pigmented sand-dollar: a living shell.
|
144886
|
My wife tells me/your dog has vomited/
on the carpet AGAIN!
|
1448103
|
|
144896
|
Scientists have discovered what I already did once on dope
way back in the Sixties.
There are so many other earths out there
that they are almost infinite.
Now in our other lives we have to
shuttle from planet to planet
reading our poems. And
|
144811
|
I have hired a relationship consultant. He helps me through conversations with my wife.
|
144800
|
... and photos of friends from former lives: the Wolfman; Drac; the Mummy; my ungrateful Son; even my gold-digging, coat-tailer ex-wife.
|
144831
|
Your favorite nickname
existed only in the bright red
cherry smoldering
at the end of your smoke.
|
144722
|
There she is. A paper doll of me. The dress, the lilt, the self-hatred. The crowd thins and swells in want of a scene. Conversations begin, pretend, then halt. My gin and tonic sweats into my hand and I lick at the…
|
144788
|
|
14471810
|
I loved without marriage and the men loved without divorce and we loved a twenty-four-year-old eating and how gracious she shone over a tame bottle of beer.
|
144711
|
But Jake doesn't hear anything. He is pure, unfiltered, liquid rage. Jake kicks Rolex dude once, twice, five times in the ribs. On the last kick, there is a snapping sound.
|
144763
|
someone left graffiti on the billboard
over: "God's a hard
act to follow"; the one that made the news
|
144797
|
in the much more terrorizing display/
of male pattern stupidity//
as seen so often on TV/
in the House and at Fox News.
|
1447159
|
How they all beat the small drum/
of the word within the world
|
144765
|
Ivan was used to explosions, but this was high in the sky. He was on his back between tall sunflowers that grew infinitely in all directions. The blast made the flowers bow their heads. Bits of debris fell from the blue sky, some shiny, trailing fire or smoke. The boy…
|
144700
|
We knew this year would be different because we bought bikinis. We had never worn bikinis before. Our swimsuits had always been shiny one-pieces with stripes, or polka dots, or tiny yellow fish. Not this year. It was a hot summer and the department store was overly …
|
144752
|
That contraption he’d invited her to pedal, somebody oughta market one of those. The closer you got the harder it got, and her feet kept slipping off the pedals. It was maddening.
|
14471910
|
I attended the burial of our affair when I found her notebook— maybe it should be called her diary—that she had foolishly left on the deck of my beach house where she stayed while I was on that short trip to Chicago. Numb at first, unsure how to proceed, I went…
|
14471910
|
|
144744
|
I imagine diving into a vat of dried fruit, enjoying the unmistakable sweetness in each shriveled morsel, until I find myself biting into an undetected metal shard.
|
1446114
|
He is leaning back against a pillar watching the dancing; a spectator to joy – both planned and spontaneous – that’s unfolding in bodies fourteen and fifteen years old in front of him.
|
144622
|
From my place, down here amongst the earth, we have many names for you.
|
14461311
|
I stomped up the steps clearing my shoes of snow. I was wearing my Rooskie fur hat with the ear flaps, and I kept it on when I went inside.
|
144653
|
“You’ve put all my anorexic friends on the table nearest the buffet,” I say. “And all my bulimic friends on the other side of the room away from the buffet and the toilets.”
|
1446126
|
My ChurchThe white dressThe bridesmaidsThe friends, the familySadnessMy church knewno music
|
144652
|
jaws blossoming with drool,/ a captured wolf slinks low/ across the crowded land/ for that most tender lamb/ to catch it by surprise.
|
144674
|
I don’t know what to do with all this money flowing from my books.
It’s burning a hole in my literary pocket.
|
144611
|
I would open an eye, waiting for it to absorb the scant light in the room, and I would see her on the far edge of the bed, the topography of her hips now a battlement to keep me at bay.
|
144663
|
rockstar, moviestar, literary supernova – burning out before all the planets are declassified.
|
144640
|
We’re more into the punishment that works its way in through the skin and coats the heart anonymously.
|
