April 14

 Thunderhead

The amber clouds part. Honey dissipates.

Syrupy piss dissolves in a cold, clear rush.

I savor the sticky aftertaste of a dream 

in which my tongue was worming its way 

through rich soil, tunneling into 

some body’s slippery velvet.

I throw off the comforter and marvel

at how much longing remains

in this seemingly barren reservoir.

The planet is noisy with morning,

teeming with latent desire.

The blinds rise, curtains spread 

of their own accord. 

Wings beat against the window.

Throbbing, thrumming. Golden.

 I throw it open.

April 13

Coachella

You seemed so beautifully harmless

standing there in your kicky heels 

that looked impossible to rub in 

They made your calves look anxious

Could you tell how out of breath 

I would easily become if pursued 

could you see in my squint 

How easily I give up 

I clamp my jaws and cling with all my claws

 to my tendency to hem and haw,

 to protect my life of quiet procrastination

Did I ever show you my log

of how many times I missed my bus

because I was afraid to cross

 before the light changed?

You were the one pinched like an hourglass 

but I was the one who was bottom-heavy 

with sand. 

It’s been years now.

You’re still standing on that corner,

hands scrambling inside your purse

as the stampede flows around you,

still wondering why the world refuses

 to  cooperate, wondering when

they’ll raise the floodgate,

not noticing that the dam has already  burst.

April 12

Sunnyside

I walked through my old neighborhood.

Marveling at the landmarks that used to pass every day but had forgotten.

The mosaicked bench in memory

Of a killed bicyclist. The bed and breakfast

Where my mother stayed. We played

Gin rummy in the kitchenette. 

Then there are the things that have changed.

The courtyard of a seedy apartment complex

Now bursting with manicured foliage.

Shelves filled with books and a sign

“Talk is cheap. These books are cheaper”

Beside a jar full of coins and dollar bills. 

A house a friend used to live in,

And another. Three separate apartments

Of women I went on dates with.

Tibetan prayer flags. Rainbow windsocks. 

A black cat comes up so I can let her,

Is immediately bored.

I miss the brightly colored houses, the flowers,

The crockery spilling out 

of a soggy cardboard box.

April 11

 Take Me to the Microscopic River

1

AI slop farms cranking out content. 

Crow parts skittering across the floor.

 Seahorse swimming in a sea of glue. 

Echos writhing in the corners. 

Piltdown particles multiplying, expanding. 

A microscopic store selling microscopic 

Merchandise in a microscopic strip mall.

2

I don’t hear your body, just your blood

 spreading its gossip.

There are wheels turning in your hands. 

Your fingers sprout hooks and loops 

to help grip each other. Your eyes 

are blank sheets of metal. 

Your mouth is the word mouth

written in lipstick across 

your featureless face.

 

3

Every pleasure becomes a pain 

if it goes on for too long.

What was the longest orgasm 

you ever experienced? The most intense?

The most surprising, the most complicated? 

The most disappointing?

What happened when you emerged

from that tunnel of bliss? Was there 

or was there not

a sudden chill in the air?

4

Bones grown so heavy

they tear through your skin

Plastic filling every cell

Clogging every pore

5

Buoyancy, fluency, despair.

Arrogance, eloquence, bondage. 

We were all on edge

We were all so scared 

The wheels in your hands stopped turning

And your blood stopped its gossip

So I could finally hear your body

Even though it was so minuscule 

I couldn’t see it 

It was whispering

“Break me”

it was saying

“Hold me under”

And then, eventually,

it was screaming 

April 10

The Last Poem from Earth

All the entrances are locked. 
You can’t get into the building 
without a key card. I think of following
One of the students in, but that seems creepy. Besides, I’m not totally sure I’m in the right place.
There are no signs for the reading anywhere.
So I sit on a bench and watch the kids
Hanging out with their bikes and their dogs
As if the world was not, in fact, on fire.

Finally the friend I’m supposed to meet comes out,
Saying he only got in because he 
Happened to see an acquaintance through the glass.
We are both irritated and by the time we get up to the proper classroom, the reading his well underway. 
There are no chairs left so the professor
In charge runs and gets us one. 
We expect him to bring another but he doesn’t. 

I haven’t been in a classroom in years. 
and I feel geriatric. The building is new,
but the wooden chairs in the room are all mismatched and old. They make me feel
Both sad and comforted.

The first poet reads verse loosely based
On sijo, a Korean poetic form.
There are lots of footnotes
Which he good-maturely admits 
he included because he found the facts in them
More interesting than the poems 
they inspired.

The second poet is thin and pretty.
High, cheekbones, sinewy neck,
Shiny pinprick eyes. She talks about time 
as if she thinks she’s the first poet to talk about time.
She had flown in from Cambridge. 
Her mind blown by time zones. I picture
a globe as a peeled orange.
Her recent collection has a title that sounds 
like a parody. She reads her poems 
like they are the minutes of a board meeting. 
Her work is hazy, without any interesting language
or a single strong image

After exactly twenty minutes she says,
“I’ll just close by reading
the last poem from Earth.” I laugh
but no one else does. She isn’t smiling.
She explains that Earth is the title 
of one of her four books. Four more 
than I’ve had published. 
She reads the poem smoothly and evenly.
I don’t remember a single word o

April 9

 Chinese Tariff Blues

A few extra cents jingling. A few stiff notes 
scratching together. Should be enough
To drown out the screaming. 

How much can the pocket hold before it splits?
How much food can you cram down your gullet
before you’re sick?

The legs of the pullets atrophy. 
The gutters overflow.
The rich drop their britches 
as the norovirus hits. Look out below.

April 8

Self-driving Wheelbarrow

Tanks run up and down her arms, leaving pink tread marks on her skin. Spiders too, and ducks, rolling their eggs uphill with their beaks. She worked at an offshore mannequin warehouse where she drove an aquatic forklift until they hired a school of mackerel to replace her. She read a post on social media that claimed that those cold plums she found so delicious were all genetically modified and coated in a skin of insecticide. Still better than the wax ones she’d plucked from the wax tree as a child. She tired to apply for jobs online but she couldn’t prove she wasn’t a robot. She took a job twirling signs for a mattress store until someone tried to mug her and she stabbed him in the throat with the pointy end of the sign. It’s a dangerous world, the ghost of her mother said. They can sue you even here in the afterlife. Right on cue she accidentally swallowed a rubber glove and the man who had broken into her apartment to molest her drove her to urgent care, saying he’d wait for her in the car. The doctor knocked a rubber hammer against various parts of her anatomy then placed the stethoscope on her tongue and told her to say ah. She didn’t say ah. She screamed it.