Two Poems

If My Housemate Fucks With Me I Would Get So Real (Audition Tape Take 1)

[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_13/Parker1.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″]

I didn’t come here to make friends.
Buildings spit their stomachs at me
and I spit back, down the sidewalk
into a bitch’s hair. I am a forehead
careening in clouds, a dirty tree branch
brushing against the shingles
of the production room. I am
groundbreaking: two as one.
Brooding tattooed over my art.
Otherwise, black.
Can do angry, can’t do
accents. I need little coaching,
provocation. Opinionated and
Everything a man wants.
Lips and boobs camera-ready.
If I hear you’re talking shit about me
in your confessional interview,
please know
seven birds have fallen dead at my feet
right out of the sky.
I learned this right hook here
when I was only six. Bitch, please.
I’m so real my hair is going gray,
legs bruised up like tree bark,
veins of my neck as swollen as
ripe fruit, the cheeks of what is growing.

Poem Made of Chewed-Up Nicorette from the Garbage in Front of Kate Hudson’s House

[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_13/Parker2.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″]

Getting dressed for the day I find mold
in an old coffee cup. What I mean to say is this:
honesty is uncomfortable and funny.
For example, today is whiskey sour day
and I know this. I return to the fields
to measure and cut the thatch that houses Kate Hudson,
her lizards, and her addiction to sucking toes.
I do not know who I am while I am doing these things.

Dreams are sex and towers.
Freshly cut grass nowhere except brain tunnels.
In the morning you roll over and tell me
there is something to be said
about the last one in the pool, unassuming DJ names
and folks with imprints on diner stools.
These are all of my personas. You love
broken skin, the way I want to punch liars in the face.

In these ways I am like Kate Hudson:
Aren’t men a bitch? Aren’t they all just dicks?
We both orgasm last
and get together with girlfriends to discuss text messages.
Beautiful women are as underappreciated
as the rising price of a pack of Virginia Slims.
In a bar somewhere she raises her glass and whispers to me:
The whole world is my bedroom.
Three birds nestle their wings into her thatched hairs.
Nature makes itself horizontal. No adventures just
soup for dinner. “And I want to know
what’s really going on in your coffee, sir.”

This is how you brush and trim the thatch,
make it feel important.
This is not a method for relieving sexual tension.
It is a resting place for Indonesian cigarette butts
and rusted nails. The day is vast and smothers me.
Also: Things lined up quite nicely without a temper.
And: Below the surface of my veins.