I finished two book reviews -- finally! Now I feel like I can breath. I'm posting what's left of the April poems. They were done, I swear! but I didn't have time to type them.


And hey, you want a nice, if slightly wistful book of poems about mothers for Mother's Day? Go here.

Comments are very welcomed, and in fact, required for this new one.

When Beauty Met Beast

a girl falls in love with her horse
sneaks into his stall to sleep when the lights are off
he’s big, awkward, cramped
he steps on her hand by accident and weeps
he’s a gelding
dried corn nicely mixed with molasses
is the only thing that excites him
he wishes he could find a way to apologize
to the girls (she’s not the first)

ostriches should never be kept in the petting zoo
she thought, as a pair ripped her blouse
tore open her cheek
they carried her between them to a sawdust and
manure filled corner
far from the shouting animal handlers

she had heard orgasms were easier under water
she wanted to go the beach but she was fourteen
and incapable of waiting
Lake Palermo down the street would have to do
just after sunset, she swam bottomless to the raft
in the center
she hadn’t expected the fish, or that they would glow
their pecking ended up helping, actually

the girl kept a female chinchilla in a cage by her bed
she liked to reach through the wire and brush
her fingertips through the chinchilla’s fur
over and over for hours, a strange smile on her face
the chinchilla had to watch when the girl had sex
with her boyfriends
she tried to look away and study the newspaper
lining her cage
the chinchilla was in love with the girl
couldn’t stand to see how the men treated her
the lies and the yelling
a chinchilla always keeps her word
she rehearsed to herself over and over
but she worried that she would never
get a chance to say it