My Blog List

Wednesday, January 24, 2018

Philadelphia Raygun

Pigeons bubble around the popcorn lady's feet.
We know the dead are for sale. They smile haphazardly.
Some people were never meant to be children but a

 special kind of childproof brick. What were you hoping to learn?
My brain is a terrorist bomb 
exploding silently every hour.

Tuesday, January 23, 2018

Brief Interviews with Forgotten Underwear Models


She had a face like boiling milk, according to her principal biographers, Briggs & Stratton. She once said, I’m not the type to dissolve into a handful of asterisks tossed over some man’s bed. She once said, You’ll never find me combing the grass blades of any lawn in a northwesterly direction. On the outskirts of the small Tennessee town where she was born & raised, there’s still a gas pump dedicated to her memory. One day, we’ll all eat teriyaki on the beach without despair as the sky unrolls above us like a clean blue papyrus. She points to a blank spot in the distance and says wistfully, I used to be a hieroglyphic there once.

Monday, January 22, 2018

A Few Lines Written While Drowning

There were always 4 or 5 things she couldn’t let into the house alive. He looked out from the window of the aquarium across the street. There was a decent chance he might reach someone with a good blast of a rifle. Instead, he was forced, with one fish, to see into the very depths of her blue eyes. He was playing the game to win on the tip of her tongue. He’d had enough of defeat, but he was still standing, right out in the open under the nearest streetlamp, surprised as anyone, white as a pelican.

Wednesday, January 17, 2018

Amusing Stories from the Casket Company

You came to the house to kill me or to give me a porpoise,
it’s not clear, but something’s gone awry, and you invite me to a party instead. It seems that in some other life, a life adjacent to this one, I stole your wife. But it’s hazy, like a butterfly in another language. You offer to translate. Death smells really bad, you say, like that kid from first grade. But he can’t help it. He doesn’t know any better. 
It’s really his parent’s fault.
They aren’t looking after him properly.

Cheese is melting on the counter. It’s sunset, after all, somewhere over there; you can hear the chain pulling it down. There’s time for one more before you go. We’re exchanging symbolic lions at the door, that ancient ritual we’ve both forgotten & don’t even realize we’re re-enacting. A man comes down the stairs neither of us recognizes. We stare at each other questioningly as he folds us both up 
like a couple of identical shirts.
He’s going on a business trip to Sioux Falls. 
We’re going with him. 
The taxi is already at the curb,
the meter running. 

Monday, January 15, 2018




So Long as this Department Store Showroom is Moving Through Apocalypse Like a Spaceship Everything’s A-OK

Aisle 7 was a shocking pink commentary on late capitalism
delivered by a baboon in polka-dotted underpants.
It was fake news at its best,
clownish & sincere.
It even won an award from the Society for the Prevention of Deep Breathing.
This time, according to the newsreel,
they hadn’t bombed the munchkins into smithereens
but buried them in tons of plastic toy trash
from Disney & their competitors.
It was a great advertisement for the cartoon
that genocidal breakfasts had become.
No one will ever forget the image
of the Virgin Mary
clutching the limp body of her stuffed teddy
crucified for the sins of the good folk at Campbell’s Soup.
The sorrow went on forever & ever
but we tied on our aprons & made hot chocolate.
It was the American Way, or some way,
for those who’d lost their way.
This time we were resolved not to hear our parents calling not realizing
that our parents had resolved not to call.
This time there were too many leftover people named
Fred who’d never been elected president
of anything.
Life is like a camera
without film that you left in a closet
that has been carried off by camels.
Besides, you moved a long time ago.
If you don’t accept Hello Kitty as your personal savior
you don’t stand a chance of salvation.
And that’s not just my opinion.
It’s written in the directions of the new Gulf War
edition of Monopoly.
Check the fine print
if it hasn’t already leapt off the page
 & into your bed
colonizing your brand new mattress
like an old coonhound.
January 14

Tonight, for dinner, we baked a pizza
topped with the theoretical exhalation of wrens 
& the screams
of children on a merry-go-round.

We watched a game
where two teams of men on giraffe-back
furiously attempted to erase each other
from each other’s sight.

I kissed you a thousand times fewer than I intended.
& you didn’t strangle me lovingly
as I always dreamed you might.

Still, I sat on your lap as if it were a seat
accidentally ejected from the cockpit of a plane.

And I fell to earth
never once concerning myself
with whether or not the chute would open.


Monday, January 8, 2018


Its necessary to maintain a state of disobedience against everything. Said Alice Notley.