Inked

Matching tattoos we got in a hurry,
a flurry of drinks
perhaps too many
as you ordered another scotch
(make it two!)
and slid one thick-bottomed glass
down the counter into
my hands.
Looking like apple juice
we drank and sang 
with some jukebox in 
an odd corner
with the beat of billiard balls.

It was one scotch
and two beers
maybe three or four more,
and eventually 
a martini or seven.

And that was the line 
into blacked-out, censored
living where what I wanted to
see wasn't there.
Your hands on my waist
and mine in your shirt.
I laughed to loud on the train,
the car rattling down
the tunnel.

But I couldn't find the light,
except the fluorescents 
making your hair a quick pale
and you marveled at the map
of Manhattan and said
"I really want a tattoo."

The alcohol spoke for you
and for me and I knew a great place
on tenth. 

Hip tattoos, god forbid,
we laid with our pants rolled down
and you were slurring so bad
the guy with the needles and gloves
almost refused to ink you.

In the moment of ink in my bloodstream
I was overjoyed with 
this sense of our beings,
and the ink coursed with the scotch
and the stars looked 
so good on our bones 
we high-fived and missed.

The next morning
with traffic in my ears
and light in every space
I called you,
coffee in my mouth.

I laughed, actually.
You said 'fuck off'
and then I said 
'tattoos, remember?'

Our laughs were hungover
but clean, and clear our teeth
clean with gin and pabst.
And the stars 
still looked good,
and we'd keep them in our bones
forever.

My hand ran over the sore
throbbing skin and it was clean
and sober and painted.
And a few blocks over
your hand touched your hip bone
and we felt the jolt in our palms.

The stars looked better ever since,
and on the nights we
sing loud and drink 
too much maybe,
we touch the stars as we dance
and forever the ink runs clean 
and clear in our veins.

Bees

I let the acid wash off my skin,
like the burn of bee sting.

The sting of love, unrequited.
Your fingerprints still smudged
on my mirror.

I blame you for years
of a bed half cold.

I blame you for
the way my lips
chap in the winter.

I blame you for 
the oily smears
across my own face.

Indentations into my
body of your DNA,
I wonder how your
fingers were so oily.

You left them here,
that was all,
and so I never relieved
the blinking of my answering machine,
a tape full of your voice
I strung across my walls.

I will never scrub hard enough
to get myself clean,
to remove all the marks
of you,
of your own body
and hands against mine.

I will never wash the sheets
enough to wash out all
of your skin and our sin
and the dark nights
when coyotes cried
across the ridge.

Across my forehead,
your thumbprint lays
flat and undisturbed.
I left no scars
on you,
never burnt you 
with birthday candles
when they fell over as you carried the
flaming cake.

Never left a knick in your knee,
never surprised you shaving
so you bled.

And I still sleep 
in the half cold sheets
with your smell deep in the fibers.
With the traffic lights playing
games on my ceiling.
We would play with them,
never winning.

I cannot wipe away the oily stains
you left across me;
a smudge.

Chinatown

You had those fire-cracker
lips, all red and hot.
Sriracha thick on my tongue-

quick crackle of cheap
explosives running
down the slanted rooftops 
and dragons in the streets.

Behind the silk screens
in darkened rooms
like harems were
kimonos to don and 
impress in, 

Your spark
to my bang,
in Geisha-face.
My feet, 
too big for these
cultures.

Melted together
in phony ways,
swirled like all
the hot peppers
in those street vendors
noodles.

I was Japan,
your tongue Thailand 
and our bodies,
China.

The streets screamed Guam,
Malaysia,
layering voices
from the din.
And yes, rickshaws
with the shades
we rode in.

And when we parted,
gunpowder on my teeth,
we bowed to the each other,
and to separate horizons.

Blue Ridge

The Blue Ridge line

hides you, years

lost in the folds and creases

of a mother's body,

her valleys 

carved by rivers.

Nestled in her side

villages, 

along dirt roads

built for moonshining.

Broken stills 

hidden by leaves,

babies with 

Mountain Dew teeth

and colicky bellies

burping up evergreen

sprigs-

peace offering to the

land they were born with.

A peace offering 

to the humid air

and rampant dew.

The hunting dogs sleeping

at your feet.

Ten thousand slams

in the screen door,

generations of scuff

and dirt in the

floorboards of Depression-era

glory. 

Here we are the hill folk,

feasting on canned goods

in root cellars,

dancing with barren feet

in the yard under clotheslined 

linens. 

Resting our head

at the foot of the Appalachians,

sweet at home in the Blue Ridge-

we are living off the scraps

of existence, living with

the sound of gnats and rusted

engines. The smell

of bacon fat on the stove.

Here we peg up our boots,

to lie under ten million stars

shining without knowledge

of where,

just where you are.

The anonymity 

of mountains,

and here

you exist.

Cup o' Joe

I shake the can
and pour rich beans
into the blades,
whirring into pieces
the love
which overflows for you.
Pulsing and spitting
it makes fragments to
boil,
to filter,
to concentrate.

Each brew is darker,
more bitter than the last.
Each cup percolating
that much longer,
my overflow
and extra,
grounds spilt
on the formica.

My shaking hands
still asleep,
they know how I ache
with you, how I am grinding my
own bones for you.

Simmering down,
dripping through 
each paper filter,
a skin thicker than the last.
But the can is always
mostly full for you.

Coffee like blood and bones
each morning I stir
up my long love and lost
need for you, 
brewing the cups down
again and again.

Monoxide

Hello darling,

The night you left
the car ran for hours
it made up
white noise for me to sleep
to, the cat curled in your empty
space- where I thought you
were.
But where I knew you'd never
come to lie down again.

The fumes came up
through our floorboards,
through the windows
and walls. Everything
open and breathing for you.
For you, 
the trees were swaying-
and for you I sang
in my sleep words
scrawled on your hands
and arms.

You left the car running,
but I didn't wait up,
never knew you hadn't come
home, in the driveway
with your arm out
the window,
cool as you tried,
cigarette limp in your
fingers.

Waiting for the journey to begin.

One Night on Full Dose

Ethereal visions-
those see-through
subway window blurs.
People melding into glass
and colors of yellow
and orange plastic chairs.

Light dripping between
my curtain lace and blinds,
7:23 and my sleep was laced
with chatters and those
ghost-subway visions.

In the lakes and waters
speckled with stars
and grey 
I swim the backstroke 
and my body shivers
with algae and silver
fish scales in my teeth.

The brown bottle
like a beggar's flask,
on my night table
with twisting, walking legs-
its rotten pineapple 
flavors in my wounded
mouth working
on me like absinthe 
shots with sugar in the
darkened bars.

My fingers curling
into my crown of 
golden hair, twisting
into ponytails again
and again.
My hands working outside
of my body to make
beautiful shapes
from my soul.

I sit without sitting,
on Vicodan in my sweating sheets
waiting for time to pass.
Waiting for my hemispheres 
to come back together
into focus.

Fannie Farkel's

Nothing left
in arcades with planetary
carpeting. I sit with
palms sprouting quarters
to feed slots
and make cheap decisions
based on bad neon
and skee ball.

My father was a champ
at skee ball.
I was not so lucky,
feeding little coins
into their mouths
shouting for food,
a little water.
No Tantalus here,
no drought ever
settled here,
heaps of paper
currency
perforated and called
tickets.

They litter the floors
all over this cheap town,
and each has the same
deep corners
and saturn-ringed carpet.
Little neon bulbs,
spiraling arrays 
of lights
and quick sounds.

Planted with my quarters
I am making my fortune
in cardstock currency
to build my estate
with pink and green walls.

We have all labeled
the grandiose 
"arcades".

Expedition

Darling, I am telling
you to sleep.
hush hush,
no wind outside your window,
and yet your brow
furrows into
deep mountain crevasses.
I can't plant anything
there in such a face.

No flowers ever grow 
in such altitude,
you can't even use
those special baking
instructions for cakes.

You don't get birthdays
at the top of the world.

You've been there,
I see it everyday
in the slope of your steps.
Were there sled dogs?
Do you have nightmares?

Is your sleeplessness 
ascertained from
24-hour sunlight
sometimes? When you
all had a cotillion 
in your parkas
at three am, because
it was so glorious
to see sun.

I cannot erase your
deep wrinkles,
can't ever take away
that journey,
the photos that hang
and the eeriness which lingers
on your brow.

I am telling you to go to sleep
and you are telling me
thirty names for snow
and you used every one 
up there.
Because that's all there was to name.

No babies are born
so high up,
no wildlife to name as a pet.

You never saw a single penguin.

hush hush,
I tell you to count penguins
to make up for it.

Darling, here
at lower latitudes
we have to sleep and wake
with sun patterns 
to work and ride trains.

You've forgotten 
and it will kill you 
in bed, shivering
and reciting thirty
goddamn names
for what is blinding you.

I am telling you to go to sleep,
and if you don't, if you stay propped
and whispering,
I'll sleep on the sofa
so you may carry on in 
the madness you get at
the top of everything
in the middle of nowhere.

The Accident

I felt the sun setting
on our backs,
sucking peach pits-
remnants of July
on our tongues,
cracking against our
crooked teeth.


The rough porch boards
are painted with yellows
and blazing pinks,
my thighs sticking
to them with the
evening's sweet 
dew lying
itself on the lawn.


You are waiting for the
stars to come out
and dance for you,
because these are the days
we're crying the most.
Walking the limping orchard
rows- watering them
with our own sort
of dew,
dewy-eyed in the mornings,
evenings, mostly.


After our peaches,
and before our
good-byes.


I feel my skin tearing
away from me
as I shift on the porch,
my bones will come through,
like broken arms
do sometimes.
Like in car accidents,


when the bones all fall
apart, out of place
with glass in your hair,
and quick burns 
across the body,
its pale facade,
meant for painting.


Your arm comes
to meet my shoulder
and the tears come
as scheduled,
the bent metal
shapes still 
lurking in the driveway.


The twilight 
still echoing
the sounds,
not birds-
the sound of breaking
and crashing
and letting go.