New Draft, week 13

Belief

Sniffing like padres for a sin,

I caught your hate in the air.

Citation-armed and tongue taut,

you were so prepared.

A locomotive transplant,

I ducked passages of mayhem,

reading from your book of god.

Your conviction narrowed your eyes,

seeking to know a newfound stranger,

as I challenged and sought to know

you, too.

A miscreant from down under,

I heard the canopies of forever come down,

the wrath of the Old Testament.

You asked,

“Who art thou that crept from a four leaf clover

in the dawn of sibilance?

The grace of the almighty saves you

and you hold a cacophony over holy water?

I shalt not know the nonbeliever

that ushers a whinny

afore stomping the ashes of her

dead brethren. Don’t you know you’ll go to hell?”

Poem Draft, Week 12

Seeking Protection

Only eleven and already we build armored torsos

to prevent viruses disguised as handshakes.

We try all the keys,

yet they are foreign like orbits.

Where is your hand sanitizer?

Yearning for acceptance,

our nerves tickle inside pockets,

cell phone vibrates even though

it’s not there.

While mothers cook outstanding pasta dishes

and fathers mullets tarry their culture,

we nip at cacti for nourishment.

We are Supermen, however,

if only in magazines.

Saving memories only

of our parental victories.

They will always run circles around us.

Our parents were softer than theirs

and we're softer than our parents.

Questions bellow by us-

What do you want to be?

Do you have what it takes?

Inferior as they are, these inquiries are liquid

and we are bone dry for other geniuses

to tell us what to do.

We attack altars, sifting clues,

locating origins of our hostility, not accepting

answers shot upon us like numb lasers.

Ambiguity scoffs at the pews like squid

inking their terrain.

Insignias reign, the pious viruses

cling to our doubts and impulses,

thicken tongues, shrink minds,

scare hearts.

Draft 2, week11

Mike Tyson and the Boy

Gap in teeth like brains

Before input.

Output: blood and salt,

Stitches and bruises.

Input: Bashing skulls and scuttle thrashings,

engaged, butted, skin rupture

and tearing from beady eyes and

vanquished heart, ripe for love

like a lobe for a pearl.

Who wouldn't scream with an eagle's urgency?

Beak vice-gripping, carnivorous, thirsty.

Reunited? Unrequited.

The piece lies gnarled and hard

as a sports novelty

in a trophy case

in Montgomery Inn

in Cincinnnati, Ohio.

Strangely humorous among so many gloves, ball, bats, jerseys,

never to mesh with said head again.

Not far from this showcase was a budding swimmer

fluttering up, down, up, down, a butterfly

with chlorinated eyes,

then BAM! Like Lloyd Christmas on vacation

from ever looking the same.

One, two, three counts and it's out.

A shard of loose tooth like a candy chunk,

instructor surveying,

goggles unflinching.

How did he find it?

Bobbing for apples

in a sea of chemical imbalances.

Flippers united,

in an unflappable urgency

to reunite halves of a biter in a mouth

so wanting.

Doctor jaws suggests a calcium cradle

while the boy waits to see

how many years it will take

to live his smile down.

An anticipated appointment replenishes

his shiny whites like glaciers newly bonded.

Draft 1, week 10

Stuck on Candyball Island

There's a tenderness in every stump,
an omnipotence of rainforest proportions,
a sweetness on the tongue of a thousand heaving
breasts.

The vaporous granite rolls like high-tide.
it wants to let you in but
Rejects All Penetration.

Rushing with fortitude,
a narcoleptic precariousness
shaves away all bright matter.
No orange, no rabbit-fucking red.

Calisthenics, week 9

From last week's "Pass the books" exercise:

Earth of Woman

One night she burnt her leg on the exhaust
of a mountain
of impatience.

Today the scab funnels coolness into our cheeks,
shifting like thoughts
that can't find a way
to be said.

Things crumbled. Naturally.

But what if the soft eyes opened?
If they, too, lived in a wood
where she ruled
violent and angry.

"Pick that shit up," she might say.
"Go on, Crackhead."
She might forget her mother tongue
quickly,
like the sweat of Vietnam,
constant as hunger,
while we mate improbably as you do.

"I eat, I shit, just like you," she might say.
"The tomatoes will smell like rat if you don't eat them soon."

I never fail to be amazed by her earthiness
though I am truly a godfather to the giant
red bushes which will descend in a thundering
halo of darkness and purification.

God says remember, god says don't give up,
God says
give up.

Imitation Post, week 9

Ilya Kaminsky's "Paul Celan"
He writes towards your mouth
with his fingers.

In the lamplight he sees mud, wind bitten trees,
he sees grass still surviving this hour, page

stern as a burnt field:
Light was. Salvation

he whispers. The words leave the taste of soil
on his lips.

Darren Delfosse's "Morning Buds"

She paints down your nose
with her breasts.

In the morning fog she envisions earth's crust,
fried eggs, she smiles at honeydews floating in seascapes, bed

hard as a stern lecture:
Sex was. Seduction

she breathes. The language moistens the lipstick,
pouty and sublime.

Sign Inventory, week 9

for "Mock Orange" by Louise Glück

•   The piece ends with two questions in the final stanza.
• The third stanza is enclosed by dashes and is the only stanza that does not contain a complete sentence.
• There is a sexual “union” in the third stanza and a “fusion” of “question” and “answer” in stanza four.
• No one is named in the text. The only characters are “I,” “you,” and “the man.”
• “Hate” is repeated three times in the beginning of stanza two.
• The first line seems to be insisting on the cause of trouble: “It is not the moon, I tell you.”
• The first stanza repeats “It is” and the last stanza repeats “How can I.”
• “The scent of mock orange” is the only smell in the work and also contains its title.
• The sound “mounts” and divides. This parallels the “paralyzing body” and the “cry that escapes.”
• The piece is largely personal and local, but ends with “world.”