western records and my septic harddrive

the man lied about the ten gallon
hats that held only six
and johnny was rooting in
the scrap metal looking
for my graphing calculator
but i couldn't stand the concerto


it was cotton and eight after the evening
and mark is pulling at my hip skin
but I am busy rerehearsing my funeral
but the music is off and the foxtrot is wronged
so bathe me in coffee to forget the town
because I will


I am setting your pinned moths free
but that cat from last year
is chewing on their dust
and I am not pleased
but tin cans are planted
and whisper it is 1962

rain echoed blues sounds

whiskeyborn to the mommas
yester-ed, yes sir
and my dreams are lying of
curls-slain and tin can impatiens
grow out loud

you find romantics
in the bagel halves thrown
to children in shells
pink and eroding
like the long weekend

tattoo your face in
my armpit
then I will always know home
and when they sell me
to chickens, they can read
of the wrong

speak softer
into rain filled jugs
for my mouth cant stand the sound
click one and
two
and two
and static

hate you yet

you stand at twelve and twelve and 2
too tall
from me and
i think i love you
because i haven't learned
to hate you
yet the birds
and the turns
and the yellow cried
for that maple syrup smell
fades from the pillow
casing the one earring
i pierced your ear with
right.
was wrong
and swelling
tell me again the story of ours

"that summer you lay between my collar bones" (newest)

that summer you lay between my collar bones


you, the smell of potato rosemary bread
warm in my sheets baked
and twisted
like tiny whirlpools in the mattress
Maine in springs and foam

me, hands bathed in vanilla
extract and garlic still creeping
from my finger pads
orange rinds sleeping under my
nails to hold your soles to shoes

light honey-limps through the broke
glass pane taped with news print
we take turns reading the
stories aloud
april 14th 2003, same day
lasting forever (until it rains)
and that one story about the dog
and the house fire is always
our favorite

loftily truthed

sew speak so speak the     truth they tell you

in this stop watch    pocketed by the Cuban
crises and that gum stuck in your hair
(try peanut butter) but mom is crying
from neighbor boys fructose induced bottled
sex drive to the store because she can’t
find milk and            you steal the twenty
to buy those sneakers or gym shoes or
whatever the dialect tech tics told me to tell
you to chew on before the procedure
where they will     imbed that sing bird
in under outside the epidermis
then you will sing it
not speak it
it truth

poem from last week

it was a tuesday after a laundry day and you and luella and elvis and and. that was the crowd plus the beaded eye from that blinking doll you carry in your breast pocket like a miniature fennec fox whispering lines from children's tales, grim and genderized like the little blue boy in all his teenage waste and the intravenous literature was not enough to update his thesaurus. and that is when elvis dialed out on the peeling blue rotary phone with the numbers that spelled l-o-s-t-y-o-u. i painted my face white and left my face on every pillow in the house. i found you in the kitchen swallowing your fist and luella is eating faded polaroids of me from two summers ago, you know the one in my underwear in front of the old oak tree by the lake where your parents first met?      you replaced that memory with the equations for your geometry on the twenty-ninth and seventh and i sing dolly parton songs backwards in that faded buckskin costume we borrowed from the children's choir three thanksgivings ago and elvis is laughing on the empty reciever. thanks for calling me slugger is the note sprawled across your breast bone with the wetted ash from the bottom of my purse, but i used the freckle under your nipple to dot the i, after that night where i followed you home and it never almost happened and i wait at the bus stop with the woman and her three children dressed as skeleton ducklings tied together with twine. she whispers 'laundry day' but it is may.

phantom minnow

moon boned and winter
faced. a cichlid die each
snowflake in the arms
of a tramp-
oline like that Amazonian
fish that nestled
home in your urethra

I am parasitic

there was that once
and you were singing
the one about the
roller skates

but I was swimming
and stealing the odd numbers
and and you

stole that tank
from the man with the fraying
mustache and he
ate raisins from my
hands for he the chickadee
went fishing
for phantom limbs




This is the poem from the first week of the project with Adam. We are picking a  "subject" and each writing a poem in response to that. This was written last week. I might post this week's poem later..

just wrote&shared

said ten weeks and dry milk

nipple-faced and monster childed
eat trains like tunnels
like a hitchcock still of sex
but wrong
or er
and they will climb aboard my back
at least until may
when i unload the disinfectant
and the g-day will eat me


it will be a softer appetite
and i will avoid the lungs
on wednesdays
and always bellow
like ella and billie
but will be eating stamps if unproven
to you
or them

hide your antlers today, the dress
code is business
but my windows are not cleaned

re-working

I am trying to write again. After a long dry spell....I am trying to be better about writing more often.
 Adam and I have decided to try to write weekly responses to each other...which involves picking a topic and then us each writing a poem based off that and then emailing it to each other to review.

Last week's topic was "phantom minnow" and this week I decided on "rotary telephone."

shoe ties like lamps

tumult walked dainty like

in line

lined by powder

where you left that one time

and I was supposed to wait

but three and two and ten

passed

and you hadn’t

but

hey, etta did you leave

your hair here

hear

I cried it to the wash

room

whom the lady asks a dollar

her name is pearl

or u

trance like and staffed

my mother

asked you to dine

yes

-terday

but your tea drops

had made an appointment

first

sleeping in wet cement

was prescribed

to the woman

whoo

pigeon-eyed and

fringe banged

like lamps.