5/10- Dear Abby, Here are you clothes.

I sometimes wish they would all die

in a freak steamroller accident--

Jax miniskirts

And pastel Pappagallos

What are you going to be for Halloween?

The girl who would be queen?

I hope your pockets are deep enough to hold all your teeth.

Tonight: Don't look for a glass-smashing

Hotel room-trashing

Scorpio.

Or animal

Magic.

My generation

Makes me sick.

But Abby,

You wear it so well.

I am often sad

That I don't have a gag reflex

When you say,

"Look what Fridita did with all those silly costumes and flowers in her hair."

!WARNING: Doing so may result in

Carbon monoxide poisoning.

I am very afraid

That this is

The climax of my life.

5/6/10- My Name is Not Julie

Last night I was nervous; I met you at our favorite bar-- the one with the foreign beers and secret booths for bullshitting.

Last night the local jazz bands were unfamiliar; The Palmetto Bug Stompers? Johnson & Honey Bannister?

Last night you were a suave fuck, with your motorcycle boots and cheap leather jacket.

Last night Big Blue took us back to your place-- your place.

Last night you fed me sweet mead-- my "potent honey tongue slipping too many words" while 150 grams spin, swallowing the background of "honeymoon."

Last night I was happy to see you did not own a television, or believe in Ann Taylor.

Last night you painted me ebony, blood stumbling through my veins like the grime in tap water.

Last night it was the way your hair shimmered under the Chinese lantern light, planted where fire should grow.

Last night the floors were cold, my feet clung frozen to your legs.

Last night you couldn't hear it, but Yoni disputed through my ears-- "You act like a slut but you're really a freezer."

Matt, did you want the breast beneath my Fletcher blouse? Did you want me bare? Didn't you want to eat me alive?

Last night I prayed for morning, I prayed for the half moon to run across the city.

But last night, every night-- a 5:45 alarm goes off and the Saint Lazarus flame dies young; you steam your pasta and teach geography.

to my sister on the edge of the campus pool

i assume the checkered taxi driver
was her daddy, maybe her brother,

grinning like a jack-o-lantern
with a missing tooth.

annie's insides step out first, then her sweet smelling clothes--
fierce stilettos kill silver stone.

it's a faithless stampede to his window
for a quarter on the mercury line;

"call when class is over,
call when you're alone."

he’s always chewing, spitting, chewing
tumors like doublemint, like ice picks--

like the stinging long legs some great god gave her,

& spaghetti-curled hair-- cocaine freeze bleach.

like the can of diet coke and the cigarette

neighboring the handle of a pink umbrella,

while mascara runs like rag water

to pressed lips, cursing the rain--

the last lost lake in america
must have stuffed those egg white clouds with a swollen cork today.

i know she's got a moon in her pocket,
los angeles and bullets on her tongue,

skeletons, secret names,
just like I do.

we’ll both remember the boys
with flasks in hip pockets,

and the firefly dinner dance
on dirty sherbet patios.

the payphone chews her nerves,
the receiving end gnaws the wire,

“all is foolish except love and honor.”

i grind my teeth hollow at the union
while they eat their breakfast, while we let go.

nurse white, anonymous, concealed.

kingfish

moss trees mock my hair
while a sleepy olive figure
rests his moon slashed eyes
on the kingfish.

in this mud-cake shotgun,
cobalt bleeds from a painting
now defaced and infamous,
sinking through the floorboards.

i can smell sugarcane burning
somewhere beyond the swamp
as sweet magnolia sweat
hammers my shrimp boots like rain.

and i leave my lungs, my faded jeans
full of cheap silver and film
to rust with the boat,
wishing for gills as i jump first.

12/5/09

the chill knots itself in my hair and a wetness from the wild purple night drips onto cracked lips, sliding down my ridiculous scarf and dusky cotton coat. this wind could wake the dead. cats past nine lives hiding under hurricane houses and early nineties scrap metal. the red-head, sugar cane, static television smile predicts southern snow and the city repeats itself while familiar rain grows faint. the hollow branches i can see from my window have been arguing for hours. sometimes i think they're just as indecisive as i am. looking into the mirror, counting lies backwards. ice and pine cones in my throat.

dear, deer

for months i watched
a brittle wick burn
to the basement of
a pint-sized urn
and the last layer of
vanilla wax dilute
swallowed by a flame,
somber and mute.

i could have put it out,
used my last bit of rum.
i could have stole the lake,
harbored in my lungs.
but the drunk deer-eyed flashes
were more vital to the martyr
and the sun forced a dance
atop the salty water.

the twisting of my body,
the acid on flesh
and finally the aftermath,
choking ill breathes.

and oh, how those questions kill.
the rot of the vines-
some dumbstruck frost tree
with camouflage eyes.
and the smell still lingers,
magnetic to your nose.
i sealed all my senses
so that i would not know.

run-on, stay still, and speed up

my long locks gone
wild to the river flooding
the creases of your left palm
hold nothing but melt
like mountaintops in summer
stretch to the solar moons
in sight, out of mind
at dawn and stay quiet
for the crickets at my feet
in bed all knowing
secrets like the one
in white webs you tangle
gold, gold around my bones
swollen eyes every time
orange beams move through
ten hour intervals or
maybe i'm wrong and
cats stay still in a frenzy like
statues of blind men watching
the crowd bleed dew and slip on
nerves inside out
littered by dust from
your teeth grind
dreamy and drowsy octave
wash out the frozen pupils
of foggy noir
opposite magma that
when you create this sleep
skipping breaths for beats
at night you are alive
(and the woods talk back)
.