Plumber’s Note

I do not want to alarm you but your
toilet was clogged with bones and fur-
thermore I saw a skeletal bird
roaming the graveyard you call your
basement. Not a reason to worry but
I heard my name in frantic birdsong
when I got the thing to flush. A whirl-
wind! The bones now live in a black
bin by the bathroom door. Make your-
self a new home, build yourself
a prayer because my next job is in a church
toilet; the pastor says his con-
gregation’s constipated in today’s
plentiful sin society, no angel wings
for anyone who seeks God in the end-
less rolls of toilet paper anymore and
he wants to flush his hope down. Like
everyone else he’s looking for relief
and belief and furthermore you owe
me three hundred fifty dollars; him,
your soul.

(originally published in Terror House Magazine, Summer 2019)

Stand-Up Comedy

[the comedian approaches the stage in sunglasses
and a shiny black and green robe.]

Knock knock.
                        (Who’s there?)

I am.
There is no punchline.

Listen past your rush-hour heart.
I am up here breathing heavily.

Listen: I want you to laugh
and never stop. I am trying jokes
you did not know you wanted to hear.

I searched coast-to-coast for lands
who laugh with me, that tectonic shifting
from belly to chest.

Why did boys like me bring ladders to school?

We wanted to learn mountains and rarefied air.
To find reservoirs of laughter waiting.

What did 0 say to 8?
                       Nice belt!

                      (I don’t get that joke!)

But I want your holy, exhaled noise.
Relax.

What do you do if you see a spaceman?

You laugh. He doesn’t know what he’s doing here.
What he’s doing anywhere.
I offered myself to the ocean–
the entertainment industry.
She did not want.
The spotlight hungers for no one.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

Why wouldn’t the chicken cross the road
if the chicken intended to cross the road?

Most everyone I know crosses the road
without looking both ways these days.
I do not call them chickens– they are my more realistic friends.

I want to make them laugh.
If you’re not laughing for me, laugh for them.

We are haunted by too many things:
dead friends, dead family, dead love,
dead strangers, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead.

You can be someone’s haunting sunlight.
Someone’s champion jester dispersing their marbles too good.

Look, a magic trick!
                                   [he throws two playing cards onto the floor]

How do you catch a unique rabbit?
U nique up on it.

How do you catch a tame rabbit?
Tame way– u nique up

on something enough to latch onto–
just a hinge’s creak
before the mouth’s swing open, closed.

Some of us never leave that darkness.
The silent divide.

Laughter will bring us close.

I mean it when I say let’s laugh until we die,
even when what we laugh about isn’t funny.

I mean it when I say if you see a space, man,
park your car, man.

It’s over.

 

(originally published in The Magnolia Review, Fall 2017)

In the Future I Will Drink More Coffee

in the future i’d be watching you smoke
cigarettes
waving your smoke away
with cleaver hands

breakfast would come
we’d slice cucumbers in the wet-
snake leather kitchen
rectangular blade neatly fit
sink-soaked
the yolk in the sandwich a little drippy
warm & familiar

the electric stampede of spiders’ feet

never did the future weave
faint spiderweb strands

 

(originally published in Sobotka Literary Magazine – Issue #3)

Seatless Unicycle

She is a seatless unicycle who dangles on a string attached to a wire on a telephone pole. Her pedals spin with the wind. The payphones wonder if still she can ride. They worry she will roll off into the parking lot and strike the black ramshackle Lincoln to gift another dent. Cars in motion on the street will snort and shriek. In saturnalia a brown Boerboel yelps and hurtles and snatches her tire with ferocity in his jaw. He tugs and pulls as her wheel snarls and squeaks. He drags with his fur the weight of concrete. Her rubber hairs become roots she cannot untangle from white oak trees sequestered to forests she cannot reach. The parking lot is gravelly and minuscule. Caterpillars need more space to bloom. Butterfly-eyed people who look like dead poets recite words with aluminum in their tracheas.

 

(originally published in Corvus Review, Winter 2015)