Backseat Business
When I told you I loved you, you nodded
as if I would just evaporate into large cities
I planned to move to and you’d return
to small houses you planned to sell.
Kissed while twisting in the backseat and laid
my hand on your nude stomach only to watch
you blend back into your mother’s thigh,
thickened with every slap of your hide.
In your family’s cramped living room, your father watched
me watching you and your brother on the sinking couch
singing loudly to Vietnamese karaoke with a voice
only my mother could have taken to her grave.
Walking Along Airport Way South, Seattle, WA
taciturn,
walking through, faces caught
in the hurdles and voids and
No-Left-Turns
of this revolving city.
burrowing umbrellas
press into onyx-drenched skies,
precipitating the downfall of hems,
clinging to that last inch of ankle.
church bells peal woe
for a fallen soldier and
plaster their sagging tears
to reflections of children and dogs in windows.
thick, thorny blackberry branches
push pieces of sidewalk
into gutters swelling with bloated leaves
and the occasional sandy heirloom.
highways converge overhead
in a time-worn thimble-fingered stitch
that mainly mends air pockets,
but is re-used to attach sequined neon auras to night’s black cloak.
Our Rejoinder
if they were to ask us:
‘why then?’
‘what were you thinking?’
our answers would appear too shallow for their lofty ears.
lock our reasons in a box and keep them high on an attic shelf.
our time was our own for standing on the balcony
and letting crickets land on our fingers, playing fiddles in our
palms.
if we were to turn and ask each other:
‘why us?’
‘why now?’
the vast hay field we lie in the middle of would answer,
‘foolishness is not the provenance of the young.’
incredulous, we release life’s little tantrums under the setting
sun
and watch our devotion skip from one blade of grass to another.
Shit-Canned
It’s November, and with a lot of time on my hands, I stand in
line at church and vote Libertarian, and then come home to make myself a fried
baloney sandwich. Feel like calling my friend at his auto shop to check on the
new front fender I ordered for my mom’s van. She slid into a snow bank at the
mall trying to avoid a renegade shopping cart. Instead, I walk outside to the
sidewalk, roll a couple of packed snowballs in my hands and throw them at
passing snowmobilers. Hit one and missed the others. Sometimes they chase me
down to the school and back, but this time they respect the truce. I walk back
into my apartment and finish eating my sandwich.
Playroom
too many graves
prematurely dig themselves
out of bones that lie at rest
inside memories of a child
whose laughter fills the room like
sunlight you can never wash off
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