Five Poems

A Worm

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A weird worm crawled into my heart
And It said, “All of your thoughts are
Not true thoughts”. The tongue tastes the air
and the air tastes like sawdust. Grey crowds of
people crumble on the sidewalks.

Now the sky is purple, and a misplaced thread of
Woven blue. Somewhere in the horizontal
hours wild geese change direction. Tomato soup
organs process chemicals.

June 4th, 2011
Glass Bottles –

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In the long-shadow sun something like coral curls under a wave. On the beach J mimics pliers with her forefinger or thumb and squeezes against K’s cartilage. That bit of skin near the fox hollow at an ear. J knows no name for such anatomy.

In manufactured cold air, K lies with dry eyes and salt-lips. There is perpetual motion in the tick of the large clock. A thought attaches itself to every object in the room.

Sand buries itself in cotton; tickles its way into linens. J shakes a headboard, vibrates the floorboards, and settles on her pillows. A scratch wakes her before the morning sun.

Serial Killer Love Poem –

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At night, through the whirring of cold air being
pushed and pulled through the filter, he watches her
like an osprey perched.
Camouflaged, hair lays like rings
of bark, and her fingers still
tense like someone playing the piano til morning.

The New Testament –

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Air is not silent by the window.
Still on the mattress my spine
Is arched. I remember, someone
once asked
a librarian, “does the bible have a
happy ending?
Yes, Jesus finds love in the end.

Jellyfish
10/7/2010 and 11/8/2010

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The hole in your neck
has not gotten any bigger
but you keep changing the
bandage.

I watch
skin pull tightly over your sternum.

Between cracked lips
you whisper into dead
salt air how your grandfather, and
your great-grandfather, both
engraved woodblocks of the sea.

The Earth
tries to preserve your house.

We pour vinegar onto your shingles,
to remove the crusted minerals.

We watch as my fingernails disintegrate,
like the jellyfish swept
to the shore. Remember when their shape
becomes the sand.