Four Poems

Scenes from the urban dumpster

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The boy who is a reliable narrator pours milk into his root beer. He scratches a sestina into the roof of his car and calls it a grocery list. He throws birdseed into sewer drains. Finches kiss cigarette butts, blue pennies, stained blouses. Sidewalks light up like 1991, like his mother after a handle of Smirnoff. Her voice is the butt of a cigarette, birdseed after a flock of finches. The boy has never been fucked. The finches are glowing like 1991. His mother fucked the man who is not a reliable narrator, who sells Smirnoff to girls with stained blouses, who uses daughters like ashtrays. The boy who is a reliable narrator kissed a daughter who is an ashtray. They separated at the dumpster. The girl thumbed her bruises. Finches took flight.

Boardwalk November

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Rain, a verb that carries
weight. Where should we put
ourselves? An October
leaning toward Providence,
a leak in the faucet, an empty

envelope, silver postmark
like the nickels we spend
on taffy and penny mints
at the beach with the baby

nurse sharks. I have never
taken you to the beach

with the baby nurse sharks,
but buying taffy at seven
o’clock in the morning

will not make it stop
raining, and boardwalks
aren’t meant for October,
and November has given us
crows, stale taffy. Everybody

knows that. The leaking faucet
drips in syllables and I count them
out loud. Every morning, I count

seven o’clock crows as they shuffle
their wings, eyes like black mints,
unblinking. A baby nurse shark
washed up on the beach,
and we pried apart its face
to find its eyelids. Sharks

do not blink. You were not there
when the tide rolled in
with the baby nurse shark.
I sent you its tooth in an envelope.

Carcinoma

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On Tuesdays you spat daisies, and Wednesdays
were for Chinese takeout, and the space between
the kitchen and the bedroom smells like 7:03 a.m.,

when she used to wake up and ask for pennies
and our wedding bands, and when I asked why,
you’d shake your head and hand me a papaya,

orange, medicinal, seeds like birth marks, the color
of a pill bottle. I remember when the doctor told us
that he had no prescriptions left, and you told him

that’s a shame because you love things that intensify,
like lost hair, hospital bills, plastic bags, the shade
of her November sunburn. Her funeral smelled

like peach tea, broken air conditioners, and it wasn’t
even raining, and she would’ve hated the blue bowl
of lemon drops, wrapped and dusty, and everyone

choking them down.

Livestock

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We have buttermilk
here, pigs like piles
of salt. Once, my sister
found the sundried earlobe
of a piglet, used it
to write a note
addressed to God, set it
to the wind.