Waiting for a spade, or any jack, really.
The pool is deep in the shallow end.
Waxy chlorine splashes your baby oil eyes.
The sun lies between the tanlines on our skin
which make us ever chameleons. Not that we shift,
but we eat where we are wanted.
I give you the iPod touch with the black fungus.
You twirl your index finger.
Then we leave. The window cranks open.
(originally published in Little River – Issue 4)
my mouth & cigarette smoke
like chewed lipstick.
faces clung with intertwined tongue
sweat, turtle. the lotioned hand.
grip now. hold.
(originally published in Vine Leaves Literary Journal – Issue #14)
there are many flowers come across paths
alongside apartments but nonesuch like the
hyacinth rose wrapped tightly as such stands
outside a tiny market in view of black-grim
graffiti reading with a smile worth at least fifty
fifty-cent avocados because spring lays beyond
the peel of skin like waking up to jumbled
white sheets with the knowing of presence past
white walls hanged with stationary song which
would sing if only strings could strum themselves
(originally published in The Bitter Oleander, Spring 2015)
the pharmacist
in her white coat
behind the coffin counter
instructed me to call the one-
eight-hundred number
but one plus eight equals nine
and nine is the first number
in nine-one-one
and there are two zeroes
in one-eight-hundred and
two ones in nine-one-one
and if you rotate the number
it’s a four-story building
crooked at the hollow nest
and what of the four
zero floors –
the barren families, pine
and needle. They scrape and dial
my throat’s frigid tones,
white shell.
I chewed my gum and thought,
what a pleasant sound ducks’ feet must make
when they waddle.
soft-boiled trampolines.
