People are Starting to Get Arrested


how you follow me
that purpled oil slick shining

I don’t bother to close the door
I squat inside, my head near the handle

the botanist is curious
rattles the doorknob for hours

I let those girls lick our noses clean
I make a cradle of my hands
and steal her hotdog

her small hand presses on my wrist,
has feathers for hair, slight webbing

I can’t stop myself from putting
my tongue on the small of her name

as I watch the records burn,
our lips bruised with grape soda,
she slips the latch down

maybe I’m full of 12th graders
making and selling paper flowers

this is the letter I thought you had read

Hunters Point, 1PM

the girl in front of me
is paying for her cheeseburger
with stripper bills, tens and fives
folded down the middle,
greasy from her thighs

her brown matted braid swings
down as her diamond-starred
fingernails untangle her cash,
wadded at the bottom of a purse

out of its gleaming depths
floats a stray napkin
white unfolding bright
struck by a breeze
from the opening door,
it rises into the street, vanishes
______

Is the last part awkward?

(This is the part of Queens that has a lot of ladies of the evening.)

Strange one...

Song of the Real Doll

“made in the workshop of filthy creation” –Frankenstein

Oracle, Orifice, my tongue can be removed for easier access,
a mouth constantly open, ready, soft

things I am missing: a voice box,
various glands, the ability to whisper

my head is a hive full of air, extra light for quick positioning,
my hair is rooted, strand by strand, should the idea of blonde
reins occur to you

you can put whatever you like into my eye,
broken wine glasses, carpet fiber, the words “I want,”
over and over again

men throw me down in the tub, the kitchen, the garden,
trying to reach the holy in me
trying to touch that faint blue light, that turning mirrored sphere

they use flesh covered instruments and they fail and fail
I never yawn and wash their tears off my breasts

I have never met a man I didn’t like

I am stillness, the stone fixed to mountain,
the November icicle that never falls

Why I Deserve an Extreme Makeover

people often read my poetry and ask
themselves, So what? or stand next to me
in line at the bank and say, How could
you do this to us? a woman
with exceptionally shimmering gray
eyes once told me that my work
made her queasy, she whispered this
while digging a hole in my front lawn,
a girl who I’ve never met (but who claims
to have extraordinarily long and full
blue hair) wrote me and blamed me
for her nightmare about a dead woman
under her bed, a man who tried to look
older by dyeing his beard gray sat across
from me at Starbucks and told me
that certain of my poems brought back
childhood memories he’d hoped
he’d forgotten forever, I get ten
call hang-ups a day on my answering machine,
sometimes a short, moist breath
is recorded, I suspect my mother
has read my poetry and is planning
a peculiar sort of gas-soaked revenge

_______

I believe I've gotten every single one of these responses, except not in the settings described.