the attic--7/9/09

This is a prose poem I wrote last night. As they say in the Wall Street biz, I'm "diversifying my portfolio". Let's power lunch.
-d
***

The Attic

Step inside. We are two mushrooms exhaling our green smoke. Here, things come in pairs
Two arms that will twist into you like vines over bicycle handlebars. Two empty bowls that
once held the meager cuisine of bohemians. Two sets of eyes that stare out of the hollows
of shadows. The macabre mother whose feet we kiss in the psychedelic armpit of mid-summer.
Step inside, but mind the broken glass and rusty nails jutting from the floorboards. Mind the
fleecy darkness and cold light. Mind our cat (she is a madwoman) Mind the dust on our stolen
board games. Mind the ghosts that hover in the soft jutting of our hips and the gaps in our teeth.
One day, maybe two, a swarm of bees had a wild family reunion in our skylight. They lost
themselves in the outlandish sunlight and fell to their death. The Icarus family Thanksgiving,
a ritual to the jealous sun god. I swept those foolish boys into the dustpan and went to work.

seven deadly sins

http://www.continuetolearn.uiowa.edu/iswfest/
I'm taking a "Seven Deadly Sins" poetry class at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival this week, and I'm pretty much a gigantic poetry burrito at this point. I'm amazed at the things I'm learning, one of which is that I really don't fit in at wine and cheese receptions. I ate my brie and finger sandwiches and bailed.
This is my instructor's work. She is rad.


You know you're a huge nerd when...
You attempt to write a cento and sort of feel like you're being buried alive.
Verb tense pisses you off.
You're excited by phrases like "and the stars in the sky are still boss" (that's Corso. I want it tattooed on my body).
You brainstorm about poetry series while drinking Dr. HyVee in the wee hours of morning.
You get maniacally excited about all these contemporary poets you didn't previously know about, then you attempt to get all your non-writer friends to become as obsessed as you.
A prose poem about disembodied ears is the class favorite.

boys--7/6

Boys

My ribcage fails to hold in my absurd heart
for it and the nerves in my skin
fail to reach symbiosis.
Once again, it must throw itself overboard.

I.
I laid with you in a red room
with a red curtain and red cheeks
red hands and red sheets
red hairs patchy as red stains
and we were young again.

II.
His sweat made my bed smell like a tomb
and I tried to tell him that the man on the couch
would rape up both if he could.
Hungry as a panther for our empty stomachs
and dirty hair.
So I clamped my jaw shut
and waited.

III.
Somewhere, your face is painted, my bedouin.
I write you letters, piecing together
remnants of my life that seem as innocent as we were.
I sneak in dried lilies, butterfly wings,
and let them sleep with ink and drunken night kisses.
Taste the gin on the sealed paper
and someday I will leave my gold sandals at your door.

Swamp Thing--5/30

Swamp Thing

How many times will you go belly-up in your toxic tank
just so you can try to reach the ocean?
You have worn out your welcome
and passed out naked on the couch.
Shut yourself in your shantytown
and let your failures become urban legends.

Your eyes have a second skin
a primordial glaze of a reptilian lush.
I have slept next to the river.
Voodoo embers fell upon my knuckles
and by morning I smelled of singed lashes
and burnt toast.

You can glide through the sewers
growing fat with the flotsam and jetsam.
You slither up through the drains of unsuspecting bubble baths.
Eel-like, you slither through the silt floor
trying to smother the brightness
of coral-haired gazelles
but I was always too quick for you.

Attics and Turrets--4/23

Attics and Turrets

There is more truth than you think
in those fairytales about those aloof princesses
kept in attics and turrets by spinster aunts
or hungry dragons.

Why, might you ask, did they not throw themselves
shrieking and kicking into the boiling moat?
Why didn't they dance off the windowsill
to meet the soft black earth cradled in thorns?

There must have been one cell of love in the dragon's tongue,
She must have felt some security in those leather wings.
There must have been good intentions
in the aunt's withered lips.

They must have known
that they would be no less trapped
in the arms of a prince.

Santa Annas--4/23

Santa Annas

You're an east coast baby
but the Santa Annas always keep you awake at night
this time of year.
Your black lungs cringe against the gusts
and your heart bleats like a windchime.

The ocean holds its breath with me
and you board up your eyes in vain;
the hurricane will always rip out the boards.
This weather, it drives you crazy.
Like the sky, I make my rotations:
each year, Cancer shuts me in it's shell as I scrape along the reef. Each year,
Leo steals the sunlight and give it to everyone but me.
The moon pushes and pulls
and I am thirsty for her again.

You're a landlocked sailor
and your weathered hands clutch women's limbs
like stalks of corn in autumn
but they will always bend for you.

caution--3/11

Caution

I would be very careful
if I were you.
You should be very careful
if you were me.
But if you were me, you’d learn to reign in
Apollo’s smoldering ponies
and pray the sun doesn’t rise on Medusa’s mascara-stained face.

Get out while you still can
because after me, you will see the world through bloody Oedipal eyes.
I will scar you worse than your mother’s back and wrists
but unlike the cripple she is, I will chase you like a vengeful Fury
or leave you like Homer’s wayward Muse
only to return at the most inconvenient hour
mid-fuck or in the middle of a hypnotic state
while you are trying purposely to forget me.

Proceed with caution, wandering bard
for you are in grave danger of a potentially pining Calypso.
I am madder than Cassandra,
drunk dialing in her tower.
Play on your burning piano
you have struck a chord.