The Things I've Done For Girls

I pretended to know
the verses to Christmas
carols for a chance
to see a Mormon
girl’s underwear,
or maybe to give
her something
(a not so Silent Night)
to confess the next week.

Another,
she was wrapped up
tight, in layers,
her young legs
trampolining under
blankets and towels
in an effort to feel
better about herself,
even if only for a year

while we were
crouched, hidden,
behind a hotel
bathroom door
in a receiving position
while the marching band
director searched the room.

The next
must have had a thing
for unimpressive oil
paintings; we made
out on a park bench
for at least an hour,
repeated gestures
back and forth
in an effort to make me
feel better about her.
I left her sitting there,
worrying
a hard candy in her mouth —
so pretty, that little pink oyster.

Congratulations

Winning a year’s worth
of pizza, I would celebrate
by filling the vacant face
of an electrical outlet
with the tail
of my blow-dryer
and going for a swim.

You don’t understand:
I have skinned fetal pigs,
cut the tail off a cat
(it was already dead, but still);
I’ve tied Barbies
to the branches
of a willow tree,
their plastic legs like
a diver’s, kicking air.

I could’ve been
a successful
serial killer.
Not to say I can’t still be,
but I might be past
my prime.

Shopping List

Standing in the checkout line,
I cheated on my wife
with a woman in a wig.
She towered above me,
luminously powdered
lavender, her nose
softly crooked;
a sort-of living
version of Sargent’s
Madame X.

I was buying socks
with piano keys
and bowling alleys,
when my father asked me
to ask my mother
the name of a cat
they once had.

Chopping vegetables
for a salad, I stare
into the cavity
of an olive, and
I imagine the nameless
cat decaying,
its eyes like dried
blueberries sitting
in its skull.

Sparks

Blonde goddess on public transportation,
I would bow to you in an instant —
touch my knees to this dirty floor
in recognition of the half-moons
of your fingernails.
I am training
my eye to find beauty
in landfills, empty swimming pools,
the underbellies of cars,
and the gaping sockets in gums.
Around my heart is a lock
made of paper, and it is
beginning to smolder
and throw sparks;
it is talking to the pilot light
on my oven, and I come home
every night
to find my house
burned down.

Notches

We are made in the dark,
swimming, growing nauseatingly
slow. It is not worth
it. Everyone had a terrible childhood.
How do you deal with such bigness
in such a small space?
How do you tell a child they will
never see their friends again
in a way they understand?
You sit up front,
and turn up the rising
percussion against their gasping,
ragged breaths.

Now, she is playing a piano
big enough for a blue whale,
and the music makes you want
to cry
until the color is gone from your eyes.

He is holding his guitar
in the same way he would wrestle
a baby alligator.
You want to be his amp,
screaming, receiving
signals.
It makes you
want to cover yourself
in tattoos
and never worry
about wearing a wedding dress.

One night, you feel
a shifting within.
Things cannot be compared
anymore,
and you delicately wrap
a brown leather belt around
your neck,
and listen to the sound
of a truck backing up outside,
bleating like a large tropical bird.

How To Develop Photos

Step one:
Close the door behind you,
and turn off all the lights.
Begin sweating, and hearing
things that are probably
motions of a serial killer,
waiting, somehow seeing.
Think of your mother and what she is
doing right now; the way she says
the word “pillow”; the large
cardboard dollhouse she made you
when you contracted chickenpox.
Think about the way your cat looks
like a fat, striped egg
when she tucks her paws underneath.

Step two:
Begin developing -
you should already have mixed
the chemicals and have them ready.
You can turn on the lights now,
and begin cursing
as you spill fixer on your
new grey peacoat and remember
that the girl you are completely
obsessed with hasn’t looked at you
recently. Decide not to eat lunch
today, afterall.

Step three:
After washing the negatives for ten minutes,
unroll them from the spool
and see that they are completely
blank -
as vacuous as the face
of your ex-lover when you told them
this time,
you were really leaving.

Lovesong with A Hairshirt

While the cat licks my hands
as if they are an extension
of her own small body
(her love is critical and harsh),

you eye your watch,
wondering how many
more years
you have to stay with me
before they won’t call you
a quitter.

You laugh with the babysitter,
hand her a small check.
I can sense warmth radiating
off of her, like a package
fresh off the postal truck
in the summer.
I admire her pale hinges,
silent muscles,
secret organs.

I want to have daughters
wrapped up in church
dresses, bound with
large ribbons. I want
to attend
their pizza parties
and see the red lipstick
on the muzzles of their teachers.

Two deer are in the median
on the way home,
stuck
with metal between them
and their fleecy dens,
in a place they were
never supposed to be.
To think, there are places
we couldn’t reach if we tried.

Chincoteague

I look through the bottom of my glass,
through the crescent of water,
at the girls with the legs
of newborn thoroughbreds.
I will never see them naked.
Tan, thinly-muscled stems
trotting them home, wrapping around
the waist of some man.

Tonight will be a night of loss.
You used to ask me if I would ever leave
you, and I would tell you,
no, not until you are done with me.

I hid my hand in your hair,
a mourning dove in its nest,
and thought about being
cut loose -
a balloon, rising until
I became only a pinpoint
of color that made your eyes water
to look for.

35th Birthday

The cake I made is still sitting
on the table,
wedges of it gone.
Last night, I dreamed of
white frosting
on your lips, your pink
tongue like a feather.

I try to feel your presence
in the house this morning,
but you are gone,
out in the slow autumn rain,
your brown hair becoming fuzzy.

Over and over,
flipping open
the cover of the book you gave me
reveals the same thing -
your almost illegible handwriting:
you slay me.

In my dream, you kissed me,
frosting and feather and all,
and my wife appeared -
she stood in the doorway,
silent, watching.

Scissors

[sonnet-esque]

Into the night we drank and stained our clothes
with warm wine and scotch and champagne from your brother.
The TV sat lonely, playing yesterday’s shows
repeating themselves, one after another.
You talked often, and mentioned many trips.
Your hair was long, you’d dyed it blonde again.
I pulled out the scissors, giving imaginary snips,
and you shrieked, and smiled over your champagne.
Some hours passed, the scissors still on the table;
I stared at their shape and you picked them up.
With thin limbs swaying, you stood suddenly, unstable.
“Cut my hair,” you said. “We’ll put it in a measuring cup.”
If not for the wine, I would’ve never dared.
But at six a.m., there it was: four cups of yellow hair.

Lions

[blank verse]

I saw a man get eaten at the zoo.
People screamed and ran, but I stood still, just
waiting for you to return from the hot
dog stand. You forgot my relish. We watched
the police cars come screaming down the street.
They made us leave with no refund, and you
were angry. A cop asked me if I saw
where the lion went, and I told him no.
Later you whispered, “I hope he got away.”

A Sestina for Miss Pitiful

[sestina]

There are moments when she wishes to break
everything in the house - dishes, lamps, whatever she can find,
to see the delicate porcelain patterns come crashing down.
There are moments when she wishes to create something
beautiful. Something she can come home to.
And yet, these moments always pass, nothing ever comes of them.

Each day seems the same, looking back on them.
Her life isn’t difficult, but still, she wants a break
from the mundane, the fits of rage, the lost belongings she can’t find.
She catches herself always looking down
at the ground, or her feet. She runs into things.
She watches ants; wonders where they’re crawling to.

Sometimes she has tea with a friend or two,
but she feels she can’t relate to them.
One is always cheerful, the other complains of a heart that’s broken.
A person she can talk to has always been hard to find -
her mother is vacationing in Africa, and her psychologist puts her down.
They both have more important things.

Meals for one are dismal things.
She once had a fiance, but he grew tired of her, too,
and left her with the property that once belonged to both of them.
These are some of the things she would often like to break,
but a bicycle for two is just too hard to find.
She tried to ride it alone once, but kept falling down.

Her mother sent her pillows of down,
but her cat saw them as playthings.
My cat likes killing birds, so why not goose pillows, too,
she thought, and she had laughed.
Her cat was killed a week later, when someone failed to brake.
The driver was never found.

I Have Measured Out My Life With Coffee Spoons

[villanelle]

A breakfast of coffee and sugar, alone.
Her large house is so empty this year.
The creek gurgles, softly, over the stones.

She painted the house the color of bone
and left out birdseed for the deer.
A breakfast of coffee and sugar, alone.

She does not care how tall the grass has grown;
she puts old pearl earrings in her ears.
Still, the creek gurgles, softly, over the stones.

She has been here on her own
for a while. She has seen the geese disappear.
A breakfast of coffee and sugar, alone.

It has been a long time since a party was thrown,
but she remembers them dancing under the chandelier.
The creek gurgles, softly, over the stones.
A breakfast of coffee and sugar, alone.

Hiding From Tornadoes

We used to hide
in the downstairs half-bath
and listen, as outside
tornadoes made their path
through neighborhoods and elms.

My mom would wake me,
softly, and carry me down the wooden stairs.
In our three acres of yard, we didn’t have one tree
near the house, but we still hid there,
away from the windows, all four of us.

Framed pictures would rattle against the walls,
and the sky would become a dense grey curtain.
My parents would venture into the hall,
to get a flashlight, or the radio, to be more certain
that we would be okay, there was no need to worry.

I felt slightly guilty, sitting barefoot on the cold tile,
because I found it exciting: to hear the sirens
warning people, to sit in the dark for awhile.

In school, we’d learned to cover our heads
with a book, in case debris began flying.
But it never did, and everyone would
return to class, pretending not to be disappointed.

Dentist, Gambler, Gunfighter

[elegy]

You are a mythological figure from the Old West,
forever coughing up whiskey and dealing Faro,
with one hand resting
on a double barrel under the table.

The hands that once were so quick
with teeth on 56 Elm Street,
are now folded primly against your chest,
where you lay in an uncertain grave.

Where would you have lived
in this day and time?
Las Vegas could not contain you;
two guns blazing, tie and diamond stickpin always in place.

On Friday nights, I like to think
that I, too, can gamble and win.
Whenever I pull a large pile of chips
across the felt, I think of you.

You died alone, feverish and sallow in sockfeet.
No Wyatt Earp or Big Nose Kate at your side,
no longer anyone’s huckleberry:
“Well I’ll be damned. This is funny.”

The House in Heatherwood

[ode]

You stood huge and white,
the Southern Victorian queen
of three grass-green acres;
a dusty driveway snaking through.

Your porch served as a home
to faded rocking chairs,
children eating frozen sweet tea,
and dogs hiding from fireworks.

Your treasures were many:
a sweltering cubby hole filled with stuffed animals,
an attic with cotton candy walls,
and two staircases: one carpet, one oak.

For twelve years you were
our tornado shelter,
the walls for our calendars,
the setting for birthday parties,
and the last place
we were a family.

Five Revelations

(inspired by Dean Young's "Ten Inspirations")

1. You decide to take a walk.
You have no shoes, umbrella,
sunglasses, sidewalk, or
estimated time of arrival.
You sell your cockatoo back
to the pet store.

2. You want a tuna fish sandwich.
You do not have any bread,
mayonnaise, or tuna. No can opener,
no sharks. You drive to the store,
buy lobsters, and listen to them
scream as they fall into the blistering water.
You have no idea how to eat them.

3. You want to send your brother
a care package. You can’t remember
his favorite candy, magazines, or
songs. You can’t find any photographs
of the two of you together.
You drink a whole bottle of wine instead.

4. You decide to make a stuffed animal.
You have needles, thread,
cotton batting, button-eyes,
and a wildlife encyclopedia.
You begin making a blue whale,
to scale.

5. You decide to fall in love.
You have no boy or girl,
no witticisms or movie tickets.
Just a house full of corduroy whale.
You stare at strangers on the subway,
for a week, until you catch your own eye
in the window’s reflection.

postcard poem

[heroic couplets]

Tonight I will make dinner for our guests.
Clear off the table, and lay out our best
porcelain plates in shades from blue to black.
We will sit and eat, and rest our weary backs
that worked all day, for hours, to cook or clean.
Then go outside, under the sky and a smoke screen
that our guests exhale from their lips stained red
from the wine that they drank while eating our bread.
The conversation will slow,
and the two guests will go,
and we will retire to our bed for the night -
the one piled with three blankets, two of them white.