Myron, Royal Palms, Gowanus, Brooklyn, 2017
“When I was a younger man / I could feel the entire world / But now that I’m older…” Busdriver
After Jane Taylor and Hoa Nguyen
verbal but not a lover who attunes illusion
nor is the lover a poem learning to walk on sand somatic stand-in
size and broadway that aggravates its homonym thinking about
him whether this lover meant moat or mote
slight quant of allusion is the specious condition of dollar
which aggravates you walking into the spinning fire
euclid measures across the lull of a dog and me steaming
a mouthful of rod starvations of posture impeccable
shorts tossed off like shirts like a healer-reader of wallace mic
eagle james american dream sketch paper corpse tree appears in the wild
a slight but specific plume men are taught that one wakes to his bodies
lined like a baking sheet matthew supermodel baraka my dollar
which aggravates that specious condition that attuned the dog outward
my dog ill and steaming a mouthful of patina-thought of whistle men
taught at the front which aggravates the looming cross the tiki torch
now a dog steaming how to transform our shared conditional maw
It’s unfair to compare the man to the woman one so complete the other bristling with prostate
But fairness was never one for this world
was born with a full head of hair
6’2″
he took a long time to come out unfairly
his eyes as is normal turned brown
had been
blue in witness he unlearned swimming
never drowned
Had no teenage years
no earning years
no sweet nor equal years
but instead went straight to death
not with ceremony not with love not with passion
What eulogy now–
He went with truth which did nothing for
he went with satisfaction
too soon and sour.
I don’t give a shit
About the jungle
Or your long trek
To profitable madness
As I sound out that place’s strange name
Sweating, mosquito-thick, blood green
Impossible to itch
An incantation
The machete blade
Turns to coin.
Reminding my shrink of this story
He hands over a live freshwater trout
I really can’t compete.
[link]
you locked the door behind, you what else
could i do? you were young, i wanted more.
in his suicide note K dreamed about
Freddie — admired, envied — never locked
their door. silent, wind and highway light crawling
sharp, i remember you mad against
the white brick wall posed as imperfection.
i had the locksmith come as a favor
he couldn’t have known, what else could he do?
i thanked him with cash, the actor performed.
i see her sipping tea
she wants to write
the Great American Joke Book
about consumerism
sour-milk yellow sniffling yolk but
they get in the way
the hardcover wesleyan
in a cable-knit sweater
the canadian monthly
masked in a methylin-soaked love letter
hands up baby
hands up
“But if I said it was the only thing that mattered
That everything else was play, was yarn, was
A 40-year-old Knock Knock joke, would you”
their theories enjamb me
up against the wall, headlines
like licorice fingernails
like bricks — she draws blood
the thinking woman left to only sit
and listen to what’s left of rain
sweet and silent, waiting, pried
loose by synthetic rubber.
helpless to understand
her dripping wet hair
cast again
salmon short shorts dipping
sweets into coffee
arhythmic now
one cheek lips the seat of her chair
like a slick, shimmering thing fighting
back toward the sea
her feet form and terror in flats, arc gently lifting
the spirit reaches out across formica, bulk tile, thoughtless
typography, salon perfect designer moms
so beauty is baited, youth a barbed hook
tested on her psalms.
