Curtsy to the Drain Pipe

I have lived too long

in the shallow end of your infection,

stepping out across traffic

not dodging,

but standing dopey in the headlights.

Here, the tad poles, the oil slick, the lone glove.

There, you drove our car into the river.

I ask forgiveness from the cigarette butts, the pussy willows, the coconut bra.

Here, the jelly flip flops, the horseflies, the ruined underwear.

There, you chain smoked Pall Malls and promised me I was pretty.

There, you bit my hand and ran into the woods.

I ask forgiveness from the blown tire, the oleander, the pigeon wing.

There, the sunken axle, the Weston in the glove box, the dog jaw.

I crouch low in the ditch. I blur slightly at the edges.

(Originally published in The Dirty Napkin)

Meat Products

I don’t kill things, he tells her,
Not even fish.
I catch them; tell them they’re pretty
and throw them back in the river.

Times before, at the Economy Inn,
the door would finally shut.
She watched from the motel window
the cars groan by, on a terrible unfamiliar road,
cars that would wrap around trees
and break the lives inside open.

Gleaming packages of flesh
and muscle cut to fit your plate.

Chewed the gutters off my house.
I finally had to let him go.
He was so happy, when the strangers
took him away.
Thought he was going for a walk.
Stupid dog.

A Mormon girl lives under my basement floor,
her black hair ripples in the underground
stream at the bottom of the basin.

I don’t make promises
and can you please, leave?
I have to get up early in the
morning.

Bad dog.
Botched suicide.
They still had to drag the river.

(First Published in "Wicked Alice")

Washing the Body

The first time she lied,
he gripped her delicate fetlocks
sniffed between her legs and
doused her down with Pine-Scented
Lysol Disinfectant Cleaner.

The second time,
(after practicing on a trunk load of Texas Grapefruit)
he chased her into the kitchen,
pressed her crown against the floor
performed a two-fisted Transorbital Lobotomy.
Still she wouldn’t hang true.

Feed the auger into the hole
until there is no resistance,
turn the auger clockwise and withdraw.
Repeat until it drains.
Send her home in a Yellow Cab.

The third time meant three
feet of Swanson’s Deluxe Garden Hose and
Sears Sheer Nylon Panties in the slant
lights (he found her endless and yes, melting pure).
He always wanted to live by a Man-Made Lake.

Drape the body over the Ironman
Resista-Stability Ball,
place the hands on the floor,
bend both elbows and raise the legs,
turn the toes out.

Once it was just a Sinus Headache
now she burns
Energy Star Compact Fluorescent Lights
during the day, turns off the wipers when it rains,
refuses to wash.

(First Published in "Wicked Alice")

Mackerel Petticoats

This stove. This hand. This lock. This snow.
Such a shame. She is not what he desires,

just locum tenens: one who for a time takes
the place of another. Everything he ever wanted

is already gone: red-headed, voluptuous, the
type of girl only obtained through indirect motions.

His wish list: fleur-de-lis, miter joint, speaking
tube. The girl that broke his heart.

That match. That noose. That tower. That falling.
Sad but true, her mouth was reconstructed on

charity – no private rooms with medical coupons,
all her teeth pulled in one visit, everyone smoking

and watching from the waiting room. This bucket.
This ax. This stump. This shotgun. Clicking teeth

and boulevards, wired her jaws shut for her
own good. The story really got ugly when

eight hundred million tadpoles swam her
body pink and busy, she kissed each one right

on the lips but nothing stuck. That bread.
That hand. That knife. That stone.

Stupid knot of blood. A sad cult assembles
in their bedroom whenever they make love.

She nails a photograph of a Carrier Pigeon
above his bed but he never takes the hint.

This branch. This rock. This wing. This bone.
Draw your legs up, the century is over.

(Originally published in Opium Magazine)

Ripping the Pristine

We never speak

not in any language,

not in arid plains

or within

these exposed boundaries.

We never say -

I open myself to you

(and never will).

Your oak floors

lie gleaming, empty as

the naked hills.

You refuse to come my way,

not three paces, not sideways,

not even in a dream.

What we avoid,

is contemplating space. Ripping what is pristine

into pure language and air – turning rejection to

warm blood and welcoming pulse.

Dumbstruck:

below our brimming hearts,

the astonishing devastation.

(Originally published in "Mannequin Envy")

And Because of This

Oh my pretty,

I have wrung you out like a rag –

and because of this

I am a shadowed wall you alliterate upon

and nothing I tell you is true.

Oval carpet, chains drape the ceiling,

I am backing away, I am breaking your belongings,

must I drive you to your knees to make you relinquish me?

And because of this

You have a bag over your head.

Your eyes are like chainsaws, or a strangling scripture,

you are screaming from the back of a pickup truck,

you speak through the mouths of road-kill

you tell me that

No one will ever love me this much.

You spread your arms wide and gears and pistons grind in your jaw,

glint of machete in your nostril.

and because of this

only birds could know the distances in your eyes.

Deadly cathedral

air of fish hooks,

and because of this

my body craves the rending, my body wants to break itself in two to prove that your love is killing me

and because of this

I say:

Just eat around my bruised parts.

But no, your love is true,

and because of this,

you unhinge your sorrowful jaws and swallow

me whole.

(Originally published in "Mannequin Envy")

I Know You from a Ragged Quarry

Unlike Siamese twins separated at birth,

there should be no physical tie between us,

no shared arteries, blood on the snow from one

is not blood on the snow from the other.

You throw off the light of a man who has tried

to solve himself against the bodies of many women.

I cast the shadow of a woman who

has used her body to bandage wounds.

You have the eyes of a man who leaves his truth

on the dresser and his history on the bed.

Back to back I am drugged with the leftover

chemicals of your lovers.

Unlike Siamese twins, separated at birth

there should be no pact between us,

but the light across the ceiling, the light across your shoulders,

the half drawn blinds tell a different story

of bitter amputation and putrid sheets,

the slow grind of granite against river rock.

We were never meant to be conjoined and still survive.

(Originally published in "Wicked Alice")