Four Poems

THE GENIUS GOES TO THE ART MUSEUM

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He enjoys the entrance the most, but not because of the gift shop. He already owns hundreds of magnets and an impressive coffee mug collection that crowds his counters and lines his window sills. He started collecting mugs to hold his other collections: pennies dated before 1943, capless markers, lithium batteries, hundreds of marker caps. He is particularly proud of his denture collection. Every morning, after breakfast but before shaving, he retrieves his current pair. Before fitting the smile into his mouth, he pulls out one tooth per day. Plastic gums, like pink half-eaten sandwiches cover his bathroom floor. Each with only one or two teeth left, depending on the month. Today, he has seventeen teeth. He is sitting on a bench outside the coat check at the art museum and does not intend to go any further. It is not that he doesn’t enjoy art. He believes it is just like masturbating. Sometimes you have to do it and sometimes you just do it because you’re bored. He even paints occasionally, but not as much as the other thing. He visits the art museum every 8th tooth, not to look at beautiful things but to watch beautiful things come and go. A toddler drawing a koi fish in the air with his finger. A purple-haired teenager marinated in angst humming a tune she has never heard before. A woman searching for a pen. An old man who cannot stop crying. He is watching art in its purest form. The moment of inception. The shaken soda can. The blister.

BALANCE

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The state champion wrestler is in love.
His sweetheart is a quiet girl who wears flannel.
Because he is a wrestler, he understands balance,
what it takes to overpower another.

His sweetheart is a quiet girl. After high school,
they will marry and live on top of a hill.
He will not forget what it takes to overpower another;
he will discover his need to drink.

On the hill, he will build a house by hand
and she will grow a garden in the front yard.
He will begin collecting his anger in liquor bottles.
She will bury her voice in the dirt.

One day, she will discover she is growing a baby.
He will be at the bar when her water breaks and
she will wait silently for two hours before he comes home
because they will not own a telephone.

On seeing his daughter, he will not go back to the bar.
The kitchen sink will become cluttered with baby bottles,
cloth diapers hung out to dry on the telephone pole.
One night, he will dream his daughter grown up,

emptying bottles of anger in the kitchen sink.
She is in love with a state champion wrestler.
She is the lead in a high school play about her mother.
She is an acrobat. She is learning to understand balance.

THE GENIUS HAS SEX

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or tries to. She is rolling on top of him
and he is trying simultaneously
to unhinge her bra and not swallow

her too soon. She is crawling
into his mouth with her tongue.
Her breasts look like small cakes

and he is cupping them, groping
a dark room for sharp edges.
She is moving her hips faster

and he needs to close his eyes
to stop himself from collapsing
the house of cards. From deflating the tires.

From melting every crayon in the house.
He imagines sad poems, hundreds
of gray hats turning black in the rain,

but she drags her hands down his chest
as if motioning the beginning of a race.
He opens his eyes and it is over.

THE GENIUS HAS SEX

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They try again. This time,
he moves quicker. He is inside her
before she is half-undressed.

The rocking begins, the quick
knocking of a stranger to be let in.
It is over soon and it does not remind

either of them of dreaming, of opening
your eyes to find it is all still real,
still breathing heavy beside you.