Four Poems

Fort-Da

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I would fog up your glasses tonight if I still had lips,
David said to me on New Years Eve. It was
beside the point that he did have lips, beautiful ones:
this was a third date and we were beginning
to make a world. Driving through Trinidad
in the first hour of the new year, we stopped
at a light behind a taxi blaring a Journey song:
Do I wanna be there in my city? David turned
and said, Don’t you find the sound of rootlessness inspiring.
I stroked his cheek, then gazed out the window
and took another hit. David, I said, You are now
my favorite magic trick in the entire Mid-Atlantic.
But he’d fallen asleep, head against the glass.
We were headed out to an island. We would rent
bicycles and ride the circuit, swerving for chickens
and stopping to smoke cigarettes at the feet of
Lady Guadalupe. Everyone else was less arrogant
than David, but his grunts were a miracle of sound.

What it Means to Excel

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He charts emotions
in a spreadsheet.

When someone asks him
how he feels, he says

can you hold
please
and then scans

the cells like an arcade claw.

“Surprise” has
381 subsets.
Mental note
to consolidate

the options
since he only ever uses

“love” and “boredom”
these days,

sometimes
“woe,” mostly for the sound
of it.

Starkly Starkly Little Twink

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We have been looking          for god
through the windows          of the bus
but have seen only red-tails          declaring
their hunting ground.

In the fog, it is easier
to pretend     the glass in our cheek          is a diamond,
old coal     made precious
from the pressures
of being a body          inside a body.

In a cabin in Humboldt
we wrote a list          on the ceiling
of all the whatfors          then hopped
the next train.

Now our fathers          get Botox
for medical reasons.          Let us all get          safe
for a minute.          If we cannot promise          to be good
we can at least               insist
on the strength          of our smallest          most locomotive
limbs.

There Were Once More Creative Ways to Say “Fucking” But I Have Forgotten Them All

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