Junkyard 1-2 (week 10)

“dancing until the sticks fall”

“I assembled this evening with the help of screwdrivers”

Free Write 1 (week 10)

She was not a charity girl
with her Ardmore, Oklahoma
drawer full of pieces—an oyster
puckered and ready to give
lust for socialism, blush for thighs.

When I pitched my voice to
the swing set’s rusted upper swivel
each rock an ultrasound scrape
her bra straps beat like summer whispers
her abiding velvet in solitaire

there are many ugly bumps
on my body. there is only
that red abrasion: Hymenoptera
medical jargon for wasp sting
rising from her belly button.

Free Write 2 (week 8)

These aluminum alloy rims
will still be spinning after I’ve passed.
Picture it: down in a rut, that bottom-
fed-excuse-for-a-creek slinging
refuse at the end of my block.
I cut the corner with back wheel slipping
and front wheel nose diving. It’s a concerted
effort with these two, they chuck me like an old shoe,
dump my body to the creek. There I expire with the soured
plastic jugs, the mold on tin and the neighbors sink water
unable to wash me down, to forget.
Or was it the bike that let them know? Tires in the air
revolving somewhere between eighth and ninth gear, the rubber
repeating: more road, more road.

Junkyard 1-2 (week 8)

“These citadels of Disney innocence”

“Flipping burgers, I am the cow at this kids
fast food birthday.”

Free Write 1 (Week 8)

Up north, we’re recycling ice cores
mere samples unearthed: each slice the casing
of a story like the flicker
frames in a film canister.
Stories and histories
and the illusion of motion.
We like our pictures
spinning from reel to reel
our history being cylindrical,
our stories unraveling. Because
asking when does spring
turn summer? finds it’s appositive
theory in some uncountable number.
In layman’s terms: the New Year just
cuts another slice in the pie.

Meanwhile, on Coney Island,
a palm reader begins and ends
on the cusp. Nevermind the skin’s
creases or that ulcer at 35. They’ll
bore it out, band aid it white
with cotton balls.

Junkyard 3-4 (Week 7)

It’s all the same people
with all the same parts.

I came to town with a pack of dogs
in my pocket

Free Write 2 (week 7)

At the Audition

We’re running the second act, second scene.
She’s third step up and stretching to pick
a grape: embryo to four seeds now crunching
behind her belly ring. It’s a briar, spiny and stage left
the director knows no grapes, no trees and leans to his assistant,
“No belly rings.”

Old men pull the flies
that let in these spectacles,
swinging drops weighing in their calloused hands,
gripping the fire wall. The director strikes the grapes,
exits the girl stage right. Action stills
as black suits wheel statued dragoons
and the bottomless urn for escapes.
The people, the parts.

Offstage she’s acting, stretching for the green one:
tannic nugget all ballooned up and pulled tight,
and that ring in her center, the cork conditioning her age.
There’s a twitch in her cheeks when the four seeds
pop, her lipness muzzling the pyrotechnics.