from The Handmade Castle

Section 1. (instead of breaking their hands, one after the other, while someone tries to reach for the phone)

Tonight you make up a father, an ordinary, sad one, smarter than anyone realizes, who reads the history of the Quarter Horse over and over again, making pencil marks in the margins, who drives his 80's Toyota slower now, since his left eye got so bad; tonight it is this father who calls you, this father whose smoke-stained voice you hear by the window as pink light leaks from the satellite dishes cupped like ears towards the grimy sky, this father who sounds distracted, who pauses until you say hello again and this father who coughs twice as he tells you about the plane crashing, about the girl he can't remove from the wall.

Saints & Cannibals is back on sale! Sorry for the SNAFU

First Draft

How to Make a Person-Bomb
after Gloria Fuertes


Start in the backseat.
Add shoes with laces that trail.
And a broken knuckle.
A ring that keeps sliding off,
bracelets that catch on the furniture.
A stick of butter.
A stick of butter.
A cup of hot, black pepper.

Put it in the crosswalk.
Put it in the doorway
of the boarded up hotel.
Send it swinging in an empty schoolyard.
Give it a book with no pages, give
it a chair with a broken leg.
Show it how to teach a dog
to heel, then give it a talking dog
who says nothing but bark, bark.

Are You Going to Eat This?
after Lynn Emmanuel

Start with a dog. This dog. This dog wanting out

of this dream. Then I see my eyes, blinded by windows, a bobby

with a talking gun, more butter and more, smearing the box,

the bureau.

Stuffing her mouth, a servant, still. We tell the dream. We tell

the maids and waitresses, we don their black aprons.

I want to ask the stove, the glaring succotash, the hated

cot. Light, even

light is a dreary guest. I see that first.

_________________

This draft was written as part of my first assignment for my first packet at NEC -- an imitation poem. This poem is an imitation of Lynn Emmanuel's "Dream in Which I Meet Myself". The title and last sentence of the poem are taken directly from Lynn's piece.