The Saint of Difficult Furniture

my sister understood your language
she paid her toll     ripped out her own
eyes rather than      see the devil

cut out her tongue when she was going
    to speak ill of our father

I still stumble    bruise my palms 
when  I cross her bridge     a handful of red hair
caught in the broken guardrail

I start out small    just a tiny letting
of blood from the ankles
with a dull knife

I know suffering pleases you    I know it’s how
we show we’re true     pure as the hum
of a fresh bucket of milk

the blood forms little
pools at my feet

your words are about
to fling themselves from my tongue

like footprints, dark and wet,
climbing a golden ladder
out of this    dirt back yard

more vispo
the text is below, if you can't read it



a sphere: how do you change its shape

you will stop both ears tightly and hold a watch

                                           perhaps you 
                                      thought of lawn-mowers, food
choppers, and can openers.  If you did so, you were still guessing.

These stories, however, are not based on the inclined plane, the lever, the screw,
                 the wheel and axle, the pulley, and the wedge.

What you have just read might leave you to believe that
the "weather-man" has not been changed by drifting.

        all of these devices 
                 shout loudly in your ears:

                                     the earth.

                                          the snow.

                                       hundreds of men.

               the rain in the tube past the edge of your hand.

You will understand better
          a complicated machine with hundreds of parts.

You can hear the watch quite plainly.  Its vibrations
                                           as it travels
                                       lighted by the sun,
living creatures on the moon.

Ecstasy at 3PM

this time
 Claire’s made sure 
  to lock the door

when she does it
 under the sheets
 her legs feel as if they
  lifted themselves away 

 trembling, reddened
 she shudders

smells the sour starlings again
 hears their crack! whirl!
  behind her headboard

the Virgin manifests 
in the waterstain
on the ceiling  her eyes downcast
   modest  
   pale finger to her lips

Claire knows she’s always watching

 irises multiply 
between her legs
 the stamens scratch her thighs

she hides a razor blade
 under her tongue
  pulls it out
   to help them along

Vispo! I've got a few more I'm going to upload. Here's one made of a collage and cut-ups from a 1940's grade school science textbook:



Hope you can read the text -- I think it's big enough.

me and my god

I'm writing a little more slowly these days.

I got a review! And it's even positive! Here it is: Mr. Reutter.

I found some more cannibal poems! I remembered writing these, but I thought they were lost forever.

Directions to My Room

When you are more experienced,
choose a postman.

Come inside my kitchen.

Dispense with the brain,
small and easily pickled.

Use a new form of preservation.

You might want sterilization
before ascending the stairs.

You don’t want light green in your brain
or in your cellar.

Watch out for the fuzz.

This postman might not be a good choice.

More on St. Clare --

St. Claire and the Astronaut

she knows he’s stalking her
though he changes shape and size

she sees him behind her reflected in the glass
when she’s looking at the Christmas elves at Macy’s

at night, she hears his mechanical breathing
hum suck hum suck outside her apartment
     he always arrives around one

   once she leaned 
against the cold metal door
with its purple handprints       asked him
to buy her cream for her special scrambled
eggs in the morning      she uses them
to cure the widow upstairs of her arthritis
    and blue moods

the hum suck paused and then he clumped
away   Claire heard the heavy magnetized 
boots on the stairs going down

the next morning the cream was in her refrigerator

sometimes at night he forgets the door
comes right in through the walls   hovers
spread-eagled  over her bed  he whispers
say goodbye to gravity

Claire the Virgin

all her life she’s waited for this 16 years of kissing cats and dogs
(she held a snake once passed to her at the petting zoo warm

and dry she didn’t let go until someone laughed and the other
girls looked away) she clutches horses between her thighs until

her clit wears out becomes a blistered hole at the center of her
she walks bowlegged and doesn’t understand the whispers

in Claire’s dreams she french kisses otters, tumbles underwater,
weaves and twitches between sodden weeds the leaves stroking

her like dead tongues she’s kissing a bamboo tree then biting it
another earthquake that night her parents glare at her as they

brace themselves in the doorway she sees the ghost of her
father’s penis swing inside his pale pajamas at the prom she

promises herself this is my night of nights the king of kings
gets drunk and pukes on her blue silk hem driving her home

he guns the car halfway up the sidewalk and whoops she decides
to do it herself with a hammer and a coyote or perhaps a mule deer

she sleeps under a thistle bush in the endless stand of pines behind
her house she brings home fleas poison ivy burns the shapes of

M and Y onto her breasts her dad catches her clambering out her
window to the roof calls her slut and nails her windows shut

Claire on Sunday

she wakes up
……. in the hospital (still in restraints)

padded cuffs around her wrists
…….her feet drumming
a tattoo like they’re attached to a different
……. band
spit matting her hair to her cheek

…………. overhead
the light from her bedroom when she was
…. ten, full of black flies

it speaks to her….crystal edges humming

…..…. it sees her mother is about to come

in Claire can’t see the door ……. the light won’t let her
………. turn her head ……. but she knows ……. her mother’s

standing there on the cusp her mother’s mental implements
……. in her doctor’s coat

……. and the light coaxes Claire out of the covers
………….. until she’s floating two feet up

…….…. swimming in chords of violent gardenia perfume
……. tasting the breasts of her aunts, the lawns of her neighbors,
……. the skies full of planes

……. Claire’s in heaven ……. black and cold ……. no oxygen and the stars
bite her shoulders ……. they talk in low, neutral voices
…….…. about dates
…………. and times and dosages

……….…........ God comes
to speak to Claire……. pulling light bulbs from his mouth
……... but she can’t hear because of the angels singing

like loud rain underwater ……. they pull her down and down, hands
………. on her wrists and ankles

………. she’s worried she’ll never see
God again and that
I’ll never get to tell him what I know

In my tiny amount of time off, I made some new paintings. I like the birds one better than the dog-headed lady -- that one was more of an experiment.





I've been doing some writing -- concentrating on doing more third person stuff. I'll post it when it "coagulates" a little more. heh.

Whoah. (sigh) I can't believe I finished all my papers. I'm free, free, free! It's a weird feeling.

So, I finally got my act together and put together a decent chapbook of my experimental poetry. I feel like mostly I'm known for my narrative confessional work, but I do a lot of experimental stuff too. It's just harder to get people to respond to it.

I submitted it to the Pavement Saw contest, just seconds before the deadline. I called it "Build Your Own Alphabet." What do you think?

Here's one of the poems from it. I wrote this 6 years ago, but I radically rewrote it last week.

The Wooden Blocks of Boise

……. Get permission promptly.
You will master your theory if you
build your own alphabet.

…--…. (tiny yellow fingers in a nun’s palm)
…----…. squeezed

…--…. splinters……. knees ……. bitten sleeves

ABH……. THR……. QRS……. UVP
…-----…. TRY NOT TO SHRIEK
…-----…. we are deaf now

if special business is not available,
make up difficult terms that occur with great frequency

machines to manufacture phrases that are peculiar to you
are underneath your ……. leaf-eating bed

very little study should be done

Remember our undivided attention
will be placed on your shoulders.