Gasoline
Blame’s got little to do with how he proves his mettle tonight in the back parking lot of the Holiday Inn. It’s not the pot, his exhausted parents, the sagging small town on the brink. Stark prospects alone can’t say what praise and only praise knows: his obeisance stoked by the jumpy gods to seethe by day and drag the night. In stacks and frayed bell-bottomed denim he ducks behind the rear bumper of a ’73 Cadillac Coupe Deville: chrome rocker molding; soft Ray tinted glass—the same late model and make his father vowed just last week he’d one day bygod own. In the moonlight a...
Read MoreRefugees
What is left if nothing’s left? The tap loses teeth-blood, Each empty cup smiles with malice. We have fallen over the fence, Our pictures torn, a history in bags, We walk like a cluster of wraiths As dull legs trudge over stones. The old will wither with frost When the night comes sooner. And if the children cry in the night There is nothing more to say Than that the stars are hungry...
Read MoreSurvey Says
after Komar, Melamid & Soldier Come on down, it’s time to play The Feud. Top five answers are on the board. We asked 100 inebriated literature professors to name something about the most unwanted poem. Buzz! A haiku. Show me haiku! Number one answer— McGonagall family, will you pass or will you play? They said bring it on. Tell me something if you know’em about the most unwanted poem. Forced rhyme. Good answer, good answer. Let’s see forced rhyme. All right, William? Addressing insensate things. Oh, glorious game board; show me odes to inanimate objects! You might sweep this...
Read MoreNylon Rain
The rain comes down on nylon lines as nylon rain, each fiber-optic strand a light shine- shrine, and a vibrating way.
Read MoreAbstract Hangover with Glass of Water
window streaked in winter’s glow four panes of glass, cruciform spine morning sunlight floods the room through closed eyelids a screen shows sky-canvases that Mark Rothko never got around to painting menacing red with swirling black streaks and below: a dull rectangular green shape next: a yellow landscape with bright green sunlight a merge of colours. A pink sea has a plughole vortex of grey: spyhole into some other zone, show the faces of the dead let every second be the last, and first. The radio music is fading. This might be the way to pass over and return, so often that it will be...
Read More