23.2.11

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.

19.2.11

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..

18.2.11

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

17.2.11

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."

5.2.11

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.