Million Dollars

You wound spindly fingers through my
hair, letting our bodies
lie in sweating heaps-
the summer's sun no stranger
to our bedside.

Folsom Prison Blues
played all night
each night
of the summer months
and we splished around
in public fountains
and whispered to pigeons
that alighted near.

I wanted to shake my hips
like Elvis and
you were trying to play
like Jerry Lee
and together
we made crazy rhythms
in the hazy 3 am
clouds of our 
winded apartment,
neon smoldering in view.

Walking to the bodega
in booty shorts
and a bra 
to pick up a late-night
pack of fags
to soothe our raging
nerves,
the heat propelling our
heady desires
to higher altitudes
than maybe
even 
Sears Tower.

Lying on the threadbare Persian
rug,
I sipped at cold coffee
as you loved on the
upright piano,
who screamed out
in glee
under your deft touch.
My voice husky
with humidity
I said
I'd kiss you any day.

And Johnny killed
his man in Reno,
while we hung our heads and
cried.
The subways trundling along the 
tracks each minute
all over our island,
pulsating with
perpetual funk.

My frizzy hair tickled
your face
as we slept side by side
on the cool linoleum,
that early dawn
place where the wind breathes
sweet and cool,
the newspaper men 
chucks bundles
to each stoop.
The stars yawn in exhaustion.

A summer of swelter
I played you
like a guitar
as you pounded
out Jerry Lee's genius
and we never flipped the record.

Our hands trembling with
divinity,
a quick touch from god
to cool our fevered foreheads,
a sweaty glissando 
in the night.

Home

A wheaty field ruffles its glory
through the plate glass windows
that do not open
in the home.

It is lunchtime and 
women in white, crumpled
uniforms sit smoking
cigarettes over plates
of leftover food.
It congeals in
sad lumps.

Across the hall,
the colored nurses
share their lunches
with the kitchen staff,
leaning on the tiled walls,
haloed in smoke
of Marlboros.

A woman rolls by in a 
wheelchair singing
Oh Moses
came down to the
river my lord
over again
in shaking melody.
It echoes
to the white-clothed
women in each room.

One scoffs as she grinds out
another smoke into the 
depression-glass ashtray.

Another hums the song fondly
with visions of cotton-picking
hands bloodied,
her ancestors
in the heat.

All across he home 
are whispers
of God,
in the touch of hands,
the snapping of sheets,
the passing of all colors.

One woman dies,
and another is wrapped 
in a crisp sheet.

One nurse stumbles,
another catches.

Tears fall down the pitchers of ice water
in the halls of rooms.
Flies buzz above all.

Sweet sweet,
Oh Moses 
came down to the
river my lord.

Rough

Please
go,
out from under
my skin.
Away from the beds
of my nails.
Please get your
dead skin off 
my sheets.
Take your 
crate of 
bad music
and go.

Please stop watering my plants.
Stop singing in my shower,
leaving your fine black
hair in my drain.
Please do not change the volume
on the television.

Take your hand off my mouth.
Take your fingers
away from my bruising
neck.
Quit popping my blood vessels
that only wanted to 
love you a while longer.

I will drain your 
foul spirits down 
the kitchens sink
and break the bottles over your
goddamn head.
One
after 
another
after
another.

Please get your mouth off of mine,
don't grope around
under my shirt.
Stop pushing your hips
into mine.

I will pack your bags
personally,
both of your grimy toothbrushes
and the cheap airbrushed porn.
I'll call you a Gypsy cab, even.

But don't grab my hair,
don't say my name.
I will cut off your fingers
like you cut off my 
lungs
with your thick 
mouth.

Please go
and don't let the door
hit you on the way out.
With my love
go, 
and take all my purpled skin,
all my blackened eyes
and wear them like
badges
of your patriarchy.

Don't sit on my sofa.
Don't pet my cat.
Get the hell out of here.

Allentown

If there was ever anything here,
it left a long time ago,
taking with it much
of the energy
and sun.

Taking away the trains
and letting the rails rust.
The yards lie filled
with ghosts of cars
that once pulled coal
across the great plains.

If there was ever anything here,
it must not have been that good.
Because now I am left
with shopping in dank
convenience stores
whose lights flicker
when the wind picks up.
I cannot replace my screen door
for it will only come loose,
rusting again.

The streets are dull grey
and cracked with wear,
we drive beaters
up and down to jobs
we took because that's 
all that was left.

I don a blue vest to 
deliver food and 
company to 
the shut-ins dying
of lung disease.
They cough blood 
and black tar into
ancient handkerchiefs 
and tell me 
I am too pretty for this place.

If there was ever anything here,
I don't think it's coming back.
Funerals each weekend as more
of those who built this place
go on to build another.
The smoke hangs thick in the
air, as their bones are let
back into cosmic dust.

Sometimes
I will take the pistol out of the dresser
drawer, the cheap wooden thing
from the Goodwill.
Let it lie cold and heavy in my hand.
If there was ever anything here,
it wasn't meant for me.

Small

Every room is bigger
when you walk into
elementary school.
With a bookbag like a 
turtle shell,
and cubbyholes.

We walk into great, cavernous halls,
our keds' laces strung with beads,
our superhero watches
telling the wrong time.

Learning to write neatly
in big workbooks,
your little lefty hand
struggling to make the book lie down.
And the teacher says,
"I know this is hard for you,
but you're doing a good job".

Concerts in the gym-ateria
parents with big camcorders
beaming in the crowd,
as we stand upon risers
and sing our best,
all the wrong notes
to recorded music.

We all smile
and laugh and go our for
ice cream after.
It melts all over your 
small and dextrous hands.

Dropping your tray on the
lunchroom floor,
not making the base in
kick-ball,
these hardships
grew anxiety.

In rooms with fifty-foot ceilings
and beautiful teachers,
reading us stories
about the days to 
befall us in time.
But for now,
we sit in a lop-sided
circle and 
hold the palms of our
best friends.

Settling

There are houses
in America,
in every corner,
each avenue
that breathe
heavy across empty
floorboards.

Stale linoleum
and dusty walls.
They are empty
and echoing.

One time,
whether years
of weeks ago,
there were 
people.

A young couple
who read
in bed,
a single mother
with two little girls.
She'd smoke on the porch.

An old woman with 
ten potted plants
and her husband
of 40 years
with taxidermy birds.

They've moved
they've aged.
The children
remember the 
houses
with peeling paint.
They smile
and drive on.

The houses settle deeper
and their bones creak in the
night,
cold drifting through.
Curtains hang like
drooping eyelids.

Everywhere
they weep,
wishing themselves
younger
and full of life.
The porch misses
late night cigarettes
and the air hangs stale
with ficus and 
ivy.

Abandoned in plain sight,
nestled between
their neighbors
sigh the broken
lonely houses,
no longer
homes.

Psycho

Some nights 
I worry Anthony
Perkins will rip into my shower
dressed as an old woman,
and other nights
I'm sure it will happen.

I am sure that heads
will roll,
and I won't make
such a pretty corpse
as Janet Leigh.
And maybe they'll
forget about my body,
and just let the shower run.

No quicksand to fill me up,
my hands adjust hot water
to hottest
far left,
farthest left
until I will melt off my
bones
before he gets the chance
to hack
me away,
I'll spin down the drain,
away.

Some nights
there's the end
waiting in my bones,
tingling my fingertips,
the end
waiting beyond the 
shower curtain.
Beyond the hands
of a trim young man
in character.

Like the fatigue of a long drive,
the weariness
of loss.
When hands don't seem
to work any longer,
when headstones look
like a nice napping place.

When each neon letter
is an invitation.
These are the nights
that are cloudless
and starry,
that I am halfway
out the door.
Eyes staring through,
maybe years,
dimensions.
Through the end.

If that's how I go out,
at the second-personality
of a beautiful man
in a frightening character,
with my head 
from my body,
sprawled in my shower,
I guess that will be ok.

Some nights
I hope it's that way.