There Is A Current Under River Ice

A mind beneath a child's stroller worth of ice.

elongate it

Spoon fed atmosphere drooling
a restaurant to-go cup where father hasn't paid
and the check is arriving late.
Mother bends, releasing a v-neck shirt.
A baby moans then dribbles a passive drink.

fast forward
I'm masturbating
I'm up in funding
I'm neck in neck in polls
I'm 'Critics Choice'
I'm employed
in moss ridden dew
on the birthday I decide
to not contact you.

We write still
enough to hand on thigh
toward the spring lace
tucked beneath your skirt.
I breathe the distance
in a language I can't speak
between an oak bench
and your leg
and i laugh.

This Was An Afterthought Yesterday

The abcess of a television
marks an entry dark;
A window that can’t be seen.

I said I wouldn’t sleep with you
and I won’t until you beg for it
and until I lose it
I’ll forget its an evening happening.

Breathe -
pump -
posistion
release -
smile.

How was your afternoon?

Now it was yesterday earlier
when we did our thing
laughing at your jokes
(I cringed)
like a prayer unfolding
I knelt to receive
the Denver omelets we made
in Paris
in Auburn
in Dreams.
You were blue that day
Coma therapy radiating the age
sag from your face

On the eve of a century.

Before I could Spell “Coriander”

“We’re on a river,” the little boy said. “This is a river and we’re on it.”
-Shirley Jackson

If I had a moment
All along the highway I’ve thought about you
Miles would be laid out
And I’d be the exit
You wouldn’t take.
But stars domed inside the sedan
Diving north and
That’s a lake next to a bigger one
(none of which are “man-made”).

I have been downtown in winter:
Felt it cringe all fall before
The snow really freezes.
The clouds falter into prayer music
Acolyting candles wicks
Blown into architecture.

It was yesterday earlier
Stop---
Bubble fizz fire worked
Into free transit
Spent one cent riding a city
Into an evening
Blue was up and red sort of
Glossed the future gold
Hydrangeas my ma
Used to plant

On the Way to Chacras

A wild pack of mutts kept their heads down and looked for food. They had mastered the art of look-no look, not even moving eyeballs in vain, save for a few glances to throw off the rest of them. They were everywhere as stand in ghosts for the barrios further out from the city center, out toward Chacras where a couple was abruptly warned by a cyclist of the danger- not of a bored policeman, but a serious threat- one embodied by the general rule that noone ever got hurt from crossing the street at the sight of some doberman/labrador mix, or the appearance of such anyway.
The heat smells of pine and blueberry bushes, nanking cherry pits spit on the lawn next to the crab apple tree that used to trick the birds into flying into the window too high to reach, even on tiptoes. We had to close the curtain on the sliding door, even at night because of the bats.
On tile, warm as body heat, this is written. Arid desert breeze juxtaposed with fountains not auspicious as the lincoln, not minimal but rather grandiose in a suggestion of aquatic sprawl, dim lights offering more than the satire previously provided. Some highlights of the central construct, the stoic recipient of the aqueous innuendo pick up the last glimmer of airbrushed sunspots across the tits and right cheek (grapes and book in ornamental slumber) as the last of the beast's horns are squeezed into the evening like a tube of toothpaste or the application of a condom, the fountains start giving purpose to the reflected illumination.
A pair of waders turns on the arachnid-wrought iron lamps- still done by hand, might as well be oil lamps- naptha still fresh in the nose as pine and blueberries.
They had to close the back door because of the bats. He walked across the pond each morning, that murky green the color of an army uniform, with an old pickling bucket, mostly used for eggs. It made all the dishes smell like egg salad sandwiches when mother used it for washing. To this day, empanadas on wrought iron display cases always bring the ghost of all the pickled yolks backlit by naptha lamps ooooh and the tile, warm as body heat, red sand and the murky water the color of pickle buckets the flacos on the corner use to douse the fiats and fords for a 2 peso note with a wild mutt look- no look, trying to squeeze out the night like a tube of toothpaste.
Palates of blueberries and nanking cherries shade themselves under a crab apple tree among the red dust and the arachnids who inhabit the nearby wrought iron fense. A stray cat gives a masterful look- no look up towards a window not unlike a bored policeman watching the aqueous sprawl squeeze out the night like the applicaton of a condom, first the grapes, then the books, the tits, and finally the bull's horns.
A pair of waders lights the lamps as a mutt drinks from the murky green water. A faint smell of naptha and pine drifts through the crab apple trees overhead. Sunspots like stand in ghosts offering more than satire dot and slowly fizzle from display cases and old pickle buckets as curtains squeeze out the night like a cyclist's warning on the way to Chacras

Dead Weekend

“The smell of decomposing flesh was so intense
that lighted candles, passed through the opening into a vault,
were instantly extinguished” -Catharine Arnold.

I.
It was yesterday earlier
when the nightlight sunburn
chaffed against the Anguilla Japonica flesh
braised to pure fascination
in the mind of the reader
sick with non-fiction sweat.

My brother saved the package
the gloves you knit him came in.
He liked your felt handwriting:
it took from the hairs knelt
before the lobe of your right ear.

Relationships, broken down
to dime-sized nipples, harden.
How intellectual!
How po-mo!
rang a miasma of sinful tolerability;
A necropolis of soul.

Imagine the conversation turned
to the form forbidden lust takes
when acted on.
A feather can say what I won’t.
As one falls moon dust feels off
an always sun burnt chest.

II.
When eels are prepared in Tokyo
they are filleted through the back
to not recall the calligraphic cut
of a samurai performing
seppuku unto himself.

III.
It was yesterday earlier,
and a dead weekend,
when I visited a cemetery
splayed out like an arm folding.
It was rapt with trees once considered
to be pagan by the Romans and as
I searched for my great-grandparents
druids danced among yew trees
whittling themselves into projectile weapons:
Crossbows to fend off grave robbers
or finish off the nearly dead
dying in urban plague pits.
It is true that exploding coffins
terrorized many religious tombs.
It is true that felons were buried
on the northern side of cathedrals.
It is true the feet of old world dead
faced east so, come resurrection,
they could stand up more easily.
And It is true
that I thought relationships hardened
in the absence of loved ones
But, memories decompose faster
when they are not around.

I got lost on the cemetery
and failed twice to find
any of my dead.

I’m sorry,
sometimes your grandson
gets distracted.