IT'S HERE

My first -and, let's be real, probably only- collection of love poems!

A meditation on marriage, misery, and missing felines

Oh and love, or a reasonable approximation thereof

Bubble Nest

a mere $12

The happiest you have ever seen me, guaranteed

Vanishing Hand

I had all the tattoos of the names of all my wives removed.
Don't know why I waited so long, should have been
erasing them along the way instead of all at once.
You said you didn't care, barely noticed them
even though they covered most of my body.

Your hand disappeared every time I reached for it

I dreamed of Summer, of garden hoses snaking through the glass,
of seagulls reflected in your sunglasses.

We drove to the plant nursery but it was closed
since a huge hairy spider plant had just taken off
one of the workers' hands at the wrist.
Blood was everywhere, and all the roots of the plants
were straining thirstily inside their pots.

We went to the fish store where all the tanks were filled
with nothing but piranhas. You asked if they had
anything else and the bandaged salesman
led you to a secret room in the back
and lifted the cover on a tank
and inside were more piranhas.

We went to the shop where they sell animal heads
and fossilized eggs and jewelry made from insects
in globs of amber. A couple of glowing newlyweds came out
carrying a mounted cat skeleton between them
with a mouse skeleton in its jaws

I felt heavy and weary, suspended like a sack
of wet laundry between my crutches.
A length of rubber clutched between my teeth,
silky ropes slithering between my legs.

On the way back home we bought roasted peanuts
that burned through the bottom of the sack

Getting ready for bed my skin slipped off
and underneath was just a writhing mass
of atoms. You reached out and they swarmed
all over you and you just laughed, even as they
nibbled all the flesh from your fingertips.

You Never Wrote Back

I wrote you a letter with my finger

on the fogged-over window of the car

as we drove from Santa Monica to Silver Lake

Drove right into the storm, hoping to speed through it

and burst into the sunshine on the other side

But it seemed to be traveling with us

and when you turned on the defogger

the words I’d written to you disappeared,

even though the glass was still cold, even though

our breath was still hot, and the rain

wrote its own letter on the windshield

in a dancing, splattery language

neither of us knew how to read

So we turned on the radio instead

and sang along

I wrote you a letter with my hands

across your back, up and down

your spine, your neck and shoulders,

tracing the letters slowly

but you still couldn’t guess them,

so I tried my fingernail, then a real nail,

then a tattoo gun, etching the words

in ink the same color as your skin

so even if you didn’t know what they said

you would never forget them

I wrote you a letter in water

to save you the trouble of reading it.
I wrote you a letter in ash

to save you the trouble of burning it.

I wrote you a letter in blood

on the inside of my skin

so you wouldn’t have to know

it ever existed

I wrote you a letter on a billboard, on a movie marquee,

on a sign in front of a suburban church,

on the side of a blimp. I hired a skywriter

to write you a letter in cloud against the California sky.

I wrote you a letter in a bowl of alphabet soup.

On a slip of paper inside a fortune cookie.

I wrote you a letter in Braille, in sign language,

in Morse code, in semaphore.

A wrote a letter in the form of crossword puzzle clues

but they were too hard for you to figure out.

I wrote a letter in scrimshaw on a walrus tusk,

in ones and zeros shot into the atmosphere

and reassembled on an illuminated screen,

punctuated by animated faces and hearts.

I wrote you a letter in paint on the shell of a tortoise.

He'll still be walking the Earth, trying to deliver it

after we’re both dead and gone.

I wrote you a letter and you told me

you prefer a postcard, that you really

only have time to look at the picture anyways

Bimini

Luscious globules of fat float on the surface
of the golden translucent stock sitting in a glass pot
to cool on the balcony. Dense broth,
viscous and rich, like glowing honey.
My fingers in it. Slick and creamy.
A rag to sop up the spillage.
In the street below, endless sheets of winter.
Frozen puddles, frost carpeting the lawns.
Up here, palms held to the blowing heater.
Your name written on the fogged-over
windowpane.
My face is a mask of dry skin.
I reach up to adjust it and it flakes off,
exposing my raw, wet meat.
I slip into the broth to simmer. Steam
rises from my body. The flesh slips
from my bones. I throw in everything I have,
everything I own, everything within reach
and stir it around. It all turns to gold
as it drifts in the sluggish current
of that nourishing stream, that burbling pool of life.
What will rise from it, what strange creature
will haul itself out of the primordial muck,
half-evolved, awkwardly dragging itself
across the earth? The paleontologists will dig up
its fossilized remains and name it after us.