It's time for spring to play grab-ass with sunflowers – those handsy creeping vines and cheeky yellow buds, for daffodils to spin and slap winter right across the face
Rags and Feathers
It is snowing dead angels, a blizzard of choir robes and feathers Bombs and tanks and guns do that, as Suzanne told you long ago Her voice an echo from the harbor, now you finally understand her There never was such a thing as a Salvation Army A song blown out of the sky by .45's with a clip of sorrows
(Song for Randy)
My breath was hissing sand in a dry arroyo, Joni Mitchell sat at our campfire, toasting butterscotch s’mores as I was dying, the sulfur taste and smell of dried apricots tying my throat closed with laces of fruit leather Anaphylaxis in the New Mexico desert the night cold, the stars cold, the cold blue lips of the Milky Way trying to shout no, no Joni, I'm not going to be a free man in Paris unfettered and alive, Not a free man even back in Taos or Denver or in the car 10 miles down the trail since I'm not going to be alive in a few minutes please conjugate "hejira" in the Arabic hijrah "departure," from hajara "to depart" because I'm departing all right, the wolf of your song circling the fire with silver smoke in its teeth, Kevin trying to make me sing "Both Sides Now" which was a sick thing to do if you think about it but he must have decided better I die laughing except singing along with Joni Mitchell saved my life, can it save yours? Try it. Let the words form up in your constricting heart: "No regrets Coyote. Just how close to the bone and the skin and the eyes and the lips you can get." Do it. Save yourself if you can.
A Donald Barthelme Reader
Where An Online Hot Tub Buying Guide from Popular Mechanics Is Dazzled by Hollywood's Bright Lights Cup holders, multicolor LED lights, and removable headrests – budget aside, when in the market for a hot tub consider the features most important for actors to play submarine and avoid their unpaid agents. The first thing to nail down is how many people you’ll generally need to accommodate, including her bodyguard and Natasha in her gown and streamers. The majority of options out there are for four to five people or six to seven people, so yes, bring the man from accounting with a face saddened like a porcupine. But there are a few large models that can accommodate eight or more adults: a couple of cops, the fire chief, the mayor. Maybe you are Gatsby! As well as extra small hot tubs ideal for two. Square inflatable hot tubs for blackbird-boned lovers who want a quick coo. Next up is the number of jets. At least 100 jets. Or should have at least 170 jets. A lot of jets. Jets are as necessary as a good hero role. Always check the number of jets to ensure you'll get the experience you want – the shocking welter of water, so peculiar and wonderful. Check water capacity (measured in gallons) and overall dimensions. Remember, size is important! Please do not gape at the pool boy.
This Little Piggy
let's play footsie with death again one little piggy two little piggy hickory-dickory TikTok rockets doomsday clocks ten seconds to midnight ten-nine-eight-seven-six little piggy how many nukes can a nuke-chuck chuck little piggy little piggy blow your house down I smell roast pork little piggy
Small, Smaller, Smallest
On a cold winter day, I squish through the streets of Greenwich Village until I stand before 75 1/2 Bedford Street, the "Narrowest House" in New York City. Where lived the widest mind – her words expanding like swan wings in flight over the quarrel of water tanks and tarpaper rooftops endlessly arguing the city. Clearly what ails me – I take up too much space. I must move to smaller and smaller rooms, crawl into an overpriced, cubbyhole of my mind and write crabbed on a stool. Or maybe jack into one of those video game follies where the walls slowly press in and squeeze – a giant lemon press for poems. Or garlic. That’s it! Smash myself paper thin, pressed like a stricken butterfly between the pages of a dictionary. Yes, that is how it’s done. To grow bigger, get smaller, said Alice. Squeeze and squint and scrutinize the margins, annotations, punctuation, the endless inky spaces within words. Smaller. Swooning past atoms, forgetting even the names of electrons and protons. Smaller still. Silly-string theory squirting from mathematical cans. Smaller. Past the hearse whisperer. The ferryman. The exquisite, infinite, idiocy of nothingness. The Quantumverse.
TSM 200
In which the poet is interviewed by the poems. “Tell us about yourself.”
| Tell me about your eyes. | I am a periscope squinting above the surface of coffee. |
| Why is your soul caramelized with soot? | My vacation in Eden was a hot time, but I wandered too long in the garden without sunscreen. |
| Why did you abandon the piano? | My father re-pointed the bricks of our house with Mozart. It was beautiful, but his fingers tipped the scales. |
| I heard you can breathe underwater. | Do you want to see my fin collection? Some people have shoes, I have a closet of dorsal Nike’s. |
| Did you once throw your fate on a wheel? | No, that is a lie spun from mud and clay. |
| What is it with your hair and the birds? | When taking trash to the dump on Wednesday, first one, then another (!) seagull pooped on my head. True facts! |
| How did you survive in the desert? | I decapitated myself by rolling up the car window. I was tired of the complaining and that thirsty mouth. |
| You cried watching “Valley of the Dolls?” | As a boy I was in love with Patty Duke |
| What do you do when your back is to the wall? | Write a sex poem. |
| You write of the co-evolution of wolf and shark. | When I stumbled on the carcasses of two frozen deer on the beach, words flooded my lungs with hunger |
Lament of a Wool-Spinner’s Husband*
Beyond the porch, hydrangea weave a blue and purple skein, your fingers spin naked kisses on the wheel – wool leaves a honey smell of earth on your hands. I listen to rain the wheel makes. I taste crabs, tide, when you say here, feel this, it is so soft and beautiful, I say is this for Pablo's socks? Yes, I can see as you spin, you will then knit this yarn into loaves and fishes. His feet, so white, will know salvation and charity, they will be an origin story, feet that create the world like Enkidu and Gilgamesh – wild man, bull man, who beats his shield before the gods, his song immortal. If only I had such socks! Dear wife, I see a cortege of right whales and topaz, hawksbills and vole-song emerge braided from your hands, yet when I try on the socks, they are heavy as iron. My voice sours, I bark like a dog, my words falling down stairs like malediction, take them, please, I feel silly In them, they are bluebirds of misery. I peel myself off, skin turned inside out, hamper rim-shot my soul – I will be sweat washed from Sunday's laundry, then drain and spread and seep down through sandy loam, where I am salt that feeds the flower beds under our awning and stain your lips again hydrangea blue.
243 West 63rd Street
black and white keys are bullets from a piano loaded in your eyes then fired by trigger fingers curled around the doorknob where you lived at 63rd and West End someone calling out "who's there?" when I would stand outside listening for the ricochet of silences as if there would still be echoes 50 years on instead of shots from the projects across the street and tasting the gunsmoke of heroin-grey sky smelling jazz salts revives me from touching the numbers on your door, the rooms now empty of music, no piano in the kitchen fact: our apartment was a block from your house Thelonious Sphere Monk Circle of 5ths where the rhinoceros statue was cemented head first by its horn in the ground as if a fat-man trumpet player made a swan-dive of scales from the balcony above the rooms now full of music the color of money, tickle the ivories tickles your teeth with diamonds until the piano player calls it quits and closes the shades each note recluse as the door bangs open the new tenants brush past me coming down the steps in overstuffed coats as if whatever music was left in the walls they've hidden in pockets or packed for extra warmth and smuggle down to the subway take the A train to Harlem where the notes escape like a flock of birds riffing into the sky
The Firepossum
I look over and see a firepossum trundling in from the storm – eight baby owls on her back, her crown of scarlet begonias. She heads to a stack of journals, feeds on the garbage I call poems. Spits and hacks out most, but a greedy smeck smeck smeck from time to time. I say "Firepossum, play dead!" and she filches around in her pouch – has a bootleg tape of the Red Rocks tour – Jerry and Co. jamming on Row Jimmy. Wikipedea says the firepossum is a mythic beast that rises in flames like the Phoenix from ashes of suburban shopping malls in Arizona. The familiar of muses who blow into the mouths of the owls like feathered ocarinas tuned to the key of see? She climbs into the burning hearth, disappears, leaving an empty room and owl pellets – I hold in my hand inky bullets of hair, bones, claws, and teeth.
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