Tuesday, Chico


The hotel swimming pool,
full of floppy children and
chemical stink. The fly
dying on my nightstand.
A quarter and magic fingers
for two minutes. Orange
diamond, black diamond,
orange -- the bedspread reeks
of bleach and violets. I need
to understand some things,
you said, some things involving
her. This time, I left.

July is listless and self-conscious;
I'm avoiding the beach,
my bathing suit has an
embarrassing hole. The ceiling
fan weeps rust every so often,
and I wonder what happened
to our bug-eyed goldfish, the red
potato, pierced with toothpicks
and string, that was sprouting
in a glass by the kitchen window.

I'm studying the way people use
space, you said when we first
met, at the party in the house
without electricity. I fell down
the back stairs and you watched
me, then offered me a hand
when you saw I was done.

Late Burial

the small sound of an old radio, some music, words I
don't understand, a nostalgic howl with lots of brass
and acoustic guitar

The scene where the car is buried by snow, all the cars
are buried in snow, the road just a faint dent

the phone ringing, going to voice mail, the phone ringing
in someone's jacket pocket, the jacket buried in a pile
of jackets at a party

the rip along your cheek, badly sewn, a scar like a series
of faint pale staples, it was a motorcycle, you say,
or a drunk ex, you don't quite remember

the leather jacket hanging from a hook on a door,
the lining reeks armpit, vanilla perfume, sick cat,
ripped inside the pocket

the wind makes a small sound, rattles snow from beech
branches, the houses across the street suddenly veiled,
the man scraping with a shovel pauses and shakes off his hat

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.