The Unborn

Tentative, mucky,
very wet, very red,
their fingers

grab our dangling
earrings in our
dreams of drowning.

Wailing
like distant wars,
like distant animal

ambulances, they paw
through our sock drawers,
our stacks of photographs.

Sticky, miniature-thumbed,
reeking of rose talc
and rancid butter,

they stain our bed posts,
our sheets, our rearview
mirrors. They murmur,

murmur in the corner,
mouthing button bits,
vanishing in vacuum

hoses, in the light
of bright lamps; we shove
them under flower

pots, under swing sets,
under stacks of news-
papers three-months old,

but they return
to breathe their sharp,
unripe breaths,

clutch their half-made
fists, inside our
closing throats.

Birds Clearly Don't Understand Glass


we wouldn't admit it,
but in your pocket slept three
baby grackles and a large blacksnake

as you stood near the winter
swimming pool, like a little
mother, but with fur,

a lightweight skeleton,
hollow bones, the age-old bell
on the collar,

your large palms
spread with shelled peanuts,
sunflower seeds, red millet,
white millet

My therapist tells me we have to work on "my problem
with biting."

1) I wish I could tell you the truth about this; my jaw
has been wired shut more than once.

My boyfriend is bruised and a little embarrassed.

My front tooth is loose and it hurts when I drink
my tea.

The sheets are in the dryer already. No one heard
anything.

I give them names. They recede in the light.
I wish I could say I went away, but I was there
the whole time.

I keep forgetting my body has weight.

2) When I was ten I sat on the bottom of my neighbor's
pool for hours, the pressure on my ears beating
like a huge slow wing. The light flickering
in the marred blue like a hand-held sky.

I kept super-gluing my fingers together, then sucking
them clean.

The neighbor boy had webbed feet -- his bike had a big cage
on the back.

We went through the woods on my big wheel.

I was never rescued. I forget what happens next.

White Shirts

While you sleep, I watch a movie. A man bangs his head against a shelf in a library. It's the magazine section: I can almost tell the year of the movie from the magazine titles. I love the image of white shirts hanging on a clothesline, as long as it's not in my backyard.
He picks scabs into the backs of his hands, and tapes old pictures of tigers all over his mirror. He ends up cutting off his fingernails.

When we lived together, I pretended I didn't like cats -- they seemed too sentimental for you, you who read Nietzsche long into the night. We slept on a futon you rolled up against the wall every morning. It was so hot in Portland, the futon stank no matter how many times you washed the sheets.

I used to worry about you burning; your medication made you so vulnerable to light. After the hospital, you moved stiffly, like a dried up robot. The cats didn't recognize you, hissed at you like you were the garbage man. And your tongue rolled out at odd intervals.

Later we decided to pick out a kitten together. You said it was too soon after our first cat died of cancer. I accused you of only caring about the sofa.

Neighbors

The boy two doors
down likes to bite,
too, but his mother

makes him eat soap
after, and so through
the summer-propped

windows we hear their
struggles in the bathroom,
his shrieks as she grabs

his mouth, the slipping
as he knocks the bright
yellow lozenge from her

hand, and then sobs
for hours, a strangled
sound like a lawnmower

stuck on a plastic toy.
One day there's an ambulance
in their driveway, no one

will tell me why, and a week
later his sister breaks
my 101 Dalmatians record.

Then the whole family
disappears; I never even see
the moving trucks, but things
like that happened on our street.

See me perform! Kinda purplish with bad hair. Also, what do I keep doing with my mouth?
Roll tape.

Tender

Four Dos Equis and his voice a plastic
radio skipping between station

and static, my new friend lays
his hand on my shoulder, his arm

as heavy as the whole weight
of his scarred white body.

Our small table smells
of moldy towel;

he's telling me he likes
being beaten, that he's never

told anyone this, that
he hires a woman to do it.

Beyond the restaurant's open
window, I hear the evening's

last wren call softly
in the chokecherry bush,

dusty leaves stunted by diesel
spatter and constant traffic.

Blurred Rose Tattoo


A gold mullet tied back
with a shoestring. Sweeping
our fireplace by getting
inside, soot on her exposed
bra strap. At the kitchen
table with a Sprite, handed
wads of fives for New Year's
because we forgot about Christmas.
Old red Cadillac; parked two
blocks away, or takes the bus.
Her own set of brushes
in a cracked plastic bucket.
The smell of bleach
and earth from her skin.
Hands that grow each week.

Big Black Dog


Head like a gunboat. Blue
eyes: stars constantly
receding. Breath of rotten
Pontiacs, half-buried
in the backyard. Follows

me to the dinner party,
insists on my lap.
He savages the chicken,
the sweet potato. No one
clucks or looks away.

The short woman next
to us, with a sound like
a flattened sparrow, lifts
a chunk of orange
something from her hair.

Dessert is on his tongue,
all over my face and neck.
Mommy, he murmurs into
the puddling ice cream, Mommy.

Little Red Pony



and the surgeons stitched you
back, black heavy thread and staples,

so in the tiny bleached bed you
looked like a girl-sewn doll,

your face wrinkling and smoothing
in sleep, your eyes making cursive

beneath their lids: shoulders, ribs
still bruised in boat-shapes from

the instruments, where they tied
you down & little red pony, little heart

galloping, how red their gloves
when they held you and started over

Disaster Porn

He rips the door off the hinges at 4am -- it's not even locked. He stumbles and hits his head on the chair. He lies still, his mouth slightly open. I can smell the piss on his pants -- there's a yellow trail of translucent vomit down one arm. His eyes are so swollen they look like leaking red fruits, as pulpy as plums. He makes himself a bowl of blackberry ice cream and falls asleep. He tips over, wakes up; he steps on the cat's tail, he steps on the cat. He leaves the refrigerator door open, knocks milk all over the red-tiled floor. He turns on the gas stove. He tries to light a cigarette and sets his beard on fire. Milk footprints follow him into the bathroom. He tries to make a knot of the shower curtain and hang himself, he tries to take off his shoes and pants at the same time. He ends up face down in the tub, scrabbling and slipping. He pauses: his breath is wet and heavy. After a moment, he asks for a beer.

Dopesick Angel


The bedsheets he uses to cover his
windows chatter in the wind, I watch

the stains on their edges move
into formation, grow wings. I imagine

what she saw just before the Mustang
struck her, I see her trying to raise her

hand to cover her eyes. He said he kissed
me because the mole next to my eye

reminded him of her, although she
didn't have any moles, and was much

softer and easier to touch. I touch
his crown as he's sleeping; I rub

the plastic edges, peel the stick-on
bunnies off the inner rim.

Ringworm Summer

On the porch that noon, we
share matches, light alcohol
from a blue bottle in our wounds.

Your purple wetsuit mended
with flag material, my mother's
bikini tied and tied again, we

urge our rented ponies into
the surf, into the blue muck
dirtied by Wednesday's rain.

Coral the color of an old scar
tears a smile into your arm;
fish, sharp paparazzi, gather to lick.

Shattered Fetlock


My uncle tells me not to
touch the tiny blue eggs
nested in the oleander bush

outside his front door.
His doorbell sounds
like a fading ice-cream

truck. Robins congregate
on his lawn, singing a Beatle's
album in reverse. On the front

steps I wear heavy gloves
meant for a much larger
man, but everything is breaking,
opening its yellow eyes.

New Painting



It's for sale if you want it.

3 dreams


It is winter and we are skiing. I am not burning as quickly as usual. You put your hand over my eyes as if to shield me from the sun.


It is winter, but at the carnival everyone is wearing shorts and pink tank tops. I wonder if I'm the only one who can feel the cold. I watch a girl watch her snow cone drip onto her toes. Her toes turn blue and start to expand.


It is not winter, or it is winter, but not very cold. The sun is missing from the sky; everything is a sort of swirled elephant or donkey gray. You are holding a sleeping cat on a park bench. The cat's head droops over your arm as if he has no muscles, or is made of rubber. Somewhere in a tree a bird makes a sound like a small cat.

Used to Live, II


the smear I drew with off-pink
lipstick on the flocked wallpaper

the torn underside of the mattress
the odd-smelling crease where
the dresser and floor meet, left side

my brother in the backseat, staring
out the window at nothing

the bed of a yellow pick-up truck,
night time

tucking your head under my chin
clock gears hidden under the sofa

cushions, sunburnt square of skin
between my shoulders

here's a happy (er) poem and pic from the state fair.

Your Tenth Birthday

clamor, bells, ringing that
sounds like the radio's voice,

awakened from your nap
by your own light, your flesh

glows a little, you leave traces
on the curtains when you sigh;

outside in the warm evening streets,
people leave their cars at stoplights,

move onto our lawn, hold their breath
at our picture window, all of us waiting

Idaho, 1972

A fly the size of a diamond
ring lays eggs in the bay
mare's wounds, deep red

holes near her withers.
The horse flicks (right, left,
left) her velvet pocketbook

ears, nibbles the yellow
stubble smearing the roots
of the dogwood; the dogwood's

scars are closing
over our names. If you
put your hands together,

you can help me
up onto her back.
Thumbs in her rubies,

we fly around the yard,
wind ripping dirty fingers
through our pony tails.

------

Hello, world.

Thanks to all who commented! I got some insights. However, sorry, publisher didn't any as is. She sorta a little liked the middle one, if I retool it.

So here's a new painting. Has nothing to do with a cover.