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.

Self-Portrait Of Myself As A Teenage Boy

I will bring you bunches of purple
flowers, because your eyes curve when you smile
and it makes me
want to celebrate. I want to experience
the humidity of you, your close proximity;
we could be magnets.

Strong magnetic fields are present that could
make some items suddenly fly

It’s springtime again and everything
is alakazam! (magically) blooming -
speaking of blooming -
I earned my merit badge in french-kissing
when I was thirteen.
Back then, my days seemed to consist
of french-fry smells/shelves of CDs/
my father pacing in his business suit.
I was a burned cake, a failed family recipe.

I was just about to ask,
how much do you love me?
when those four handsome boys
in matching t-shirts smiled at you,
and here I am, with a handful of wilted petals.

Disposable

I buy sunglasses whether or not I look good in them, if I like the frames.
Behind cheap blue plastic and mirrored lenses,
no one can see you getting dewy-eyed
over a dead pigeon.

Love has a nasty habit of disappearing overnight

Thursday morning:
perfect, pearly-pink intestines
coiled beside a tiny grey
kitten at the end
of the bridge.

You know I love you,
but I've got news; we're gonna have to get rid of you

In July heat, a brown dog’s
haunches sticking
out of a dumpster.

And now I’m ready to feel your hand
And now I wanna be your dog

The Beatles sing “Good Day Sunshine” and
a yellow cat is taken
out with the morning’s trash.

Barren

(an imitation of Lucie Brock-Broido)

Throughout four acres of empty trees, a single mourning dove is cooing
For amaranth from its half-built nest, echoing between humid sheets of fog.

In the parlor of the manor, a young woman in a worn dress
Of black velvet twines her fingers in her lap and pretends not to cry

Over the empty cradle, the tiny leather shoes, her breasts
That ache in vain.

The Bearer

The Bearer
(an imitation of William Olsen's “Gods and Goddesses”)

Balmy evening when we heard soles of tennis shoes slapping sidewalks while we sat on our tiny hill of a front lawn ignoring the pressure of brittle grass into our palms and watched stupidly as our friend’s only son with arms full of something limp and awkward approached us with heavy breathing and sweaty limbs and on the verge of dampening dead fur with teenage tears said that he was sorry even though there was nothing he could do but watch as the car ran over our last dog.

Thursday

(a loose imitation of “Equus” by Austin Hummell)

She sits in the bathtub, watching
her soft brown hair pool around her, the brunette
strands of seaweed clinging to foam,
her face distorted in the faucet -
a silver reflection that she watches while
saying softly one two three four five,
all the way to sixty, and then starts again,
until twelve minutes have passed,
and she says to herself he is late, two hours late.

She has never worn lipstick,
because her mother taught her to play
the clarinet at age eight,
and she has since kept the instrument
immaculate, playing almost every evening,
strengthening her embouchure, pressing
pale fingers onto silver keys as if she were
dialing the phone to reach someone
of great importance - gently but with purpose.
Silent evenings, she would turn the house
into a vessel for the notes she created,
each one played with a subconscious,
yearning hope that it would bring her father home early.

The front door opens with such force
that the metal doorknob kisses the wall, hard,
leaving a bruise on the wallpaper. Her knees
jerk, sending a small wave over the edge of the porcelain,
and she barely avoids tumbling while impulsively
grabbing her green robe instead of a towel.
She thanks her forgetfulness for leaving the
keys in the car, and slides barefoot between rose bushes
and through the back screen door, letting it slam.

Miss Dashed Hopes

(an imitation of Laura Kasischke's poetry)

To have been the meat in the jaws of a wolf. To have been a handkerchief tied around a headache, set on fire (while the cat
gave birth to two kittens,

both dead).
To base the outcome

of your romance
on a raven’s beak. Or the way the bedsheet crumples

between kneecaps and nightmares.
(Do not bother her, her eyes are postcards,
she buys things in pairs.) To have been the seatbelt
that saved the child. To have been

the metal frame of an umbrella, stabbed into cake. Or the yellow of hair
snared in a brush. Like the nest

of wasps in the cabinet. Such concentrated worry. (Will it ever
end?) Twenty songs in one night. All the trumpets and bass drums
sounding out

their final notes against the dusk.
(I’ll beat on this drum ‘till I’m dead)

Once, I heard my brother punch a hole in the wall we shared. My father returned
his birthday gift, unopened. Once, someone stared
and asked, “Did you see that shooting star?”

It was gone,
but I looked anyway,
as if it could have frozen, just for me. To have been

that star, and to have become the black sky.

Marc Bolan Stands In Line at the Airport Behind Piet Mondrian

[an imitation of Patrick Lawler's poetry]

1.
I prefer swans to airplanes, but since safety precautions for traveling have increased, I went with Delta.

The top of my top hat is a mirror, for those taller than me. It makes being looked down upon more bearable.

Predicting one’s own death is pretty impressive. I know you don’t believe in the color green, but the way the trees came crashing through my windshield might’ve changed your mind. Talk about the fundamentals of nature.
I heard you’ve just begun to extend your lines past the edge of the canvas, and here I am getting glitter on your bowtie.
My problem is my imagination; it won’t all fit in my suitcase. Perhaps you could take a few Ziploc bags of it with you.

2.
I can help the next person in line.

Will you help me roll,
Help me roll, to my soul

Will you be checking any luggage for this flight?

Ride it on out like a bird in the sky-ways
Fly it all out like an eagle in a sunbeam

Here’s your boarding pass, sir. I’m afraid you’ll have to leave your tiger at the gate.

I ain't no square with my corkscrew hair



3.
It’s hard to make a tea party out of peanuts and ginger ale.
I have eaten chocolate with Ringo Starr. I have seen him cry while driving a car. I don’t think the situations were related.

I ain’t no square