North and Kedzie

On Kedzie, down which no bus ran, I lived
with a roommate dark and tired as syrup
if syrup were sad all the time, who hated
a roommate selling to cover the rent
of a roommate fired from CVS
who invited the devil incarnate,
Hannah, to crash on our couch… Breath In. Breath –
I gotta get out! I grouched to the man
I loved the first time that winter; I sobbed
If this is my home, I don’t have one.
(The mice hid their muzzles inside the walls;
The moths stopped spying through the window screen.)
But everyone loved me from head to toe,
capitulating – Then you have no home.

Debate

When A walks by, all B’s mental
weather vanes signal a change of direction.
The reigning subject: seismology,
then – first round, a jaw turned fast too hard
and there’s a new middleweight in town.
I swear I will not think of you in ways of which
you would approve. B says to A. The ratings spike.
So who gives in? The redwood or the skeleton key?
Doors swing wide for B though A is more admired.
For A to shy from trouble is no fault–
B feels the plates shift and in turn
is tired to not love A’s god
he is so noble. Still, B’s home is a hive
and flies must wonder what to sting is like.
A, are you tired of being nice?

Clarihew

Elizabeth Taylor,
drunk in her trailer,
admitted her contract
made her wear contacts.

Sonnet

Honed, hived, you’ve slept tight as heat
against me, specific, as unfamiliar
as my house in the dark. Here it's Deet
and candles, a past porch life as sure
as a sliver, a four beer slur.
Your mouth opens like a safe, creaks
with yen. Come here and recover.
I come. What another lover
was, you aren’t. Sheets and sheets
of what you aren’t could cover
a library floor. Darling, treat
this as kudos - another
man would buckle under
my kind of esteem.

Morgan

Blonde and round as a tack
and as fond of you as anyone
I know. Shitty days come and go.
To make amends, the world
maps out, closes its gaps,
so she can stand one foot in Russia
and one in Japan. Yes of course
she's one of the blessed,
the precious few, for whom circumstance
bent over for fate -a Helen
young in years but wearing the pants,
not so much captured as advancing
with coolers of beer for the boys
in the horse.

NO SALE NO POEM

This isn't the first day he's woken
to thoughts of photosynthesis and flowers
blooming like the opening of a warm front.
It's Monday and he's not going to work.
Next to him, his girlfriend Sharon
pulls on black stockings.
On Friday a football player at the school
died of something quick and seemingly harmless
until his mother insisted he go to the hospital and now
today is the funeral. She wants to write about it.

On the bed, she leans over him, half-dressed,
describing what she would rather be doing.
But kids won't teach themselves
and substitutes always left rude notes about
more discipline. Her skirt covers the tattoo on her ass
that spells out in small script NO SALE NO POEM -
a meaningless tattoo she got long before
he met her at a bar (a bar, for god's sake)
and saw the kind domesticated animal
in her face. She was always trying to hide
the fact that she was a teacher and loved it
and had never hurt anyone knowingly in her life.
Sharon's parents, and his, are wealthy
Are you bored? Last night I watched clouds
flying up at an angle across a moon
that looked like a coin in water.
I tried to decide if it was tar or flowers
I was trying to spit out, but it got cold
and I got into bed. I hear there
will come a time when I can finish a story,
write about something other than myself,
but who are these loved ones insisting this is true?

Casablanca

I wish we were back in the dim
light, your roommate there on the couch
and Humphrey Bogart looking grim –
a sour cheers and a slouch –
as if we were the slim
broad who’d left him biting his lip
on the platform, cut to the quick
by no hand on no familiar hip,
no Ilsa or her Swedish sounds.
She’s pure love in a slip
and, no question, we’re into it –
your roommate and you and I and Rick:
Of all the gin joints in all the towns
in all the world we say. Rick frowns.