Drive Into the Storm

An old man shopping at Goodwill
has been in the housewares aisle for an hour
sorting and organizing the glassware
into size, shape, color.
He remains focused the entire time,
his face tightening briefly into a slight smile
when he completes a set.

A woman comes into the café, laden with bags.
She picks up and replaces every sandwich
in the deli case, yelping and barking periodically,
before finally buying one. Everyone is staring at her.
She suddenly starts screaming
“I ain’t no hollaback grill! I ain’t no hollaback grill!”
before storming out, dropping and picking up
her bags, yelling the rest of the song
as she scurries away

Just inside the Vietnamese restaurant
stands a full size white artificial Christmas tree,
fully decked out even though it’s almost February.
The waiter wears a black baseball cap
and a t-shirt that reads FBI: Female Body Inspector.  
Salty pho ga, rubbery banh cuon.
The waiter asks if we want our leftovers wrapped up
and we say yes with phony enthusiasm

Black clouds roll in like a tide
swallowing up the wisps of gray and white
I slip into the car just as the first fat drops
explode against the glass
The floor is covered with sandwich wrappers
and empty take-out boxes
and the mismatched jars I use for drinking glasses
The back seat is filled with garbage bags
piles so high I can't see out the back window
Black clouds heading west
I turn the ignition, the radio shrieks
and I peel out and drive straight into the static

Hospital Birds

The cold suck of the tubes and wires.
Clear bags of glycerin, ice water,
thawed and refrozen and thawed.
Every morning a hummingbird hovers
outside my window, looking to insert its beak
into my arm. Every evening a robin
perches on the top branch of the larch
and sings my diagnosis, though I can't hear it.
My skin bristles with pins.
A grid of tiny knots I keep picking at
An itch in my testicles. The skin grows
over the stitches. A hawk hangs suspended
over the parking lot. The mouth of the wound
is jagged and hungry and will not shut.
They stuff it with gauze and honey
and send me packing. Once home
I sit on the edge of the tub and
the moment I unwrap the bandages
a swarm of flies appears and covers
the oozing chasm, tickling my skin
with their hairy legs, their lapping tongues,
their shivering wings. They lift me up
and carry me back
where the technicians strap me down,
reconnect the tubes and wires.
Rehang the transparent sacks.
The beeping recommences. My skin
bristles with pins. They smear goo across my chest
so they can see through my skin.
We watch my heart, valves flapping
like tiny wings. Nothing sticking to them.
Down the hall an alarm sounds.
An old woman whimpers.
If I turned my head I would be able to see
perched on the top branch of the larch outside the window
a single junco, buffeted by the wind

You Stopped Asking

I finally figured out what I should have done
What I did wrong, what you wanted me to do

The colors were less painfully chromatic
when a fine layer of dust had settled on them

I returned to work
No one had noticed I was gone

The icy fluorescent tubes washed everything
A faint flicker of painful blue

I swiveled my neck to see you crumpled in the corner
Just your clothes with nothing inside them

Box upon box of c-fold paper towels
Standardized size for most manual dispensers

You stopped telling me and I stopped asking
I guess you were tired of all my wrong guesses

The chilly whistle of the H-VAC system
The whining of pipes, hair clogging the vents

I dreamed the walls shook, the floor shuddered
I dreamed it was January instead of Summer

The hand truck with a broken wheel
The elevator stuck between floors

I dreamed about breaking into your house
And unbuckling my belt and kissing you

with as much tenderness as I was still
able to  muster

Inch

Wary sparrow eying

the tortilla crumbs at my feet

A man staring at a tree

as if deciding whether to piss on it

Two strangers waiting in the parking lot

for the locksmith

It's been months now since you turned away
I hope to write again someday

Diet

You left your hands in the fridge
not sure if it was by accident
or if you expected me to take them out for you
the next morning. But the next morning
you were gone
and your hands were still there
and I didn't know what
I was supposed to do with them.
I secretly hoped
you would come back for them
and when month after month passed
and you didn't, I realized
I had to do something.
I couldn't bear seeing them
every time I opened the door.
I found myself skipping meals
or else eating out
but I could still hear them in there
scuttling around among the condiments
scratching to get out and caress me
in a way they never did
when they were attached to you

Poem Screamed in a Phone Booth in the Dormitory Lobby

Better get a grip, he'd say, better use a mop
Blue yarn yellow rolling bucket
Dump the gray water down the hopper
Something warlike warms itself by the fire,
downing mug after toxic mug
Your ass is grass, he used to say
I could never tell how smart he was because
he would constantly downplay it
with the self-deprecation of the truly arrogant
Not that I was innocent, I certainly ranted
over the phone enough times
to warrant some embarrassment
How was I any different
Everything in our magic circle
bordered on the maniacal,
balanced on the rim of suicidal.
Our fingers froze at poverty’s fringes,
or got scorched on the vents that breathed their fumes
into every carpeted room
We would’ve ventured further into the dark
but something always clawed us back
None of it was intentional
The grass stains, the mud pies,
the scorched brick and Pizza Huts
There was love, I shouldn't discount that
but it felt hollow as a Wiffle ball
lobbed into the brambles, heavy as the paper kites
that wouldn't rise above the vacant lot
that was the entire world to us