Draft 1

A violin, a box, a blue envelope. A list poem, the list poems. The list poems from the boys I didn't have. The ones they sent internationally, which is significant. Consider the tongue, fingers, the walking involved. Brief illustrations of events since our parting. Went to Poland with my father. Fell in Love twice. Ate oranges in San Francisco. Sometimes they were accusations of the happiness I've forgotten. Back when you were a dream only I was having. I don't remember their faces now. Shadows in leather jackets or baggy sweatshirts, hoods pulled over the eyes. Maybe they sit together at the bars, unknowing. I'm their common thread. Went to South America. Became an uncle. Did what they did to forget the time when I was a dream only you were having. A clown nose, a photograph, honey dipped bread. Real things are Real things because they simply sop when all wet.

bargaining

I'll give you all the money in my pocket, the rest of my cigarettes, and my first born child

Anything you want.

I'll drive your sister to the airport.


No deal?


I'll stop drinking. I'll stop stealing cars. I'll stop lying about my life of crime.

I'll go to church, I'll wash your car, I'll bring you clean socks from upstairs.

I'll give you cartwheels, expensive suits, flowers, and diamonds the size of my fist.

I'll give you my gmail password.


No good?


I will take pieces of ny times articles to construct clever poems for you every afternoon while you are not yet home but I am waiting. I will be waiting with the cat who does not know he is waiting and for that I am envious. I will put my envy in a jar and save it till I have enough to make a soup for us for supper. The soup will be delicious.

Ok instead

I will no longer be envious. I'll start eating better: my pride, my hat.

I will fold 1,000 paper cranes. I will live secretly in a closet under the stairs, only to appear when needed, for a predetermined sentence of time, a maximum of six years. I will fold my cranes there.

I will begin to read moby dick in silence and not speak until I have finished.

I will apologize to everyone and let them know it wont happen again.

I will call your ex girlfriend and tell her you were right.

We can draw straws. We can shoot for it. You can borrow my gun. ANYTIME.

Ok? Fine.

I will go to the store.
I will buy the milk.

He wrote his dreams down backwards so that he would not miss a thing.

But then he'd send them to me that way,
all mismatched, and fucked up,
eternally opposite,
leading to the beginning
the moment of falling fast
asleep.

Have you ever read a letter back to front?
So it starts from the goodbye, the love, the yours, or sincerely, or since early,
which is the whole point of the letter anyway.
You work your way up
thru family news, weather pleasantries, hello greetings, finally the date.

Like stopping sex.
Sex stopping.
You refrain holding hands, from clasping to fingertips
to hugs with cheeks and noses touching toward pretending to be asleep first, to hugs
and lastly to the tiny wave, so much like the first that drew you in;
"Why yes, it's you, hello, you've finally come."

Like hearing a great book report on a novel and its ending.
You buy the book, start from the start, edge toward what you know..
Though in this particular example you don't mind much, you're just grateful, and ready.

Much like it being April
yet we know the summer already.
Later, we'll tell it,
"We rode bicycles, we were very poor
there was so much to say."

What If He's Not Crazy

What if he's not crazy.
What if he believes his arm is actually his woman
and he doesn't want to take his coat off because
then she will get cold.

What if that's why he won't take it off,
The young cop's so mad and they're going to take him away
but he's not upset, because at least he'll have his arm.

If hunger causes sorrow and thirst will make you mad
then I do not want to eat you.
I will stake out the bar and take you in little shot glasses
and swallow one by one until my piece of mind comes back.
Better this, than happiness.

What if we're not lonely.
What if I believe you're like a candle going out
when you're really a black cat walking toward me;
your little back raised high, stretching
ready for sleep.

If You're Not Here

If you're not here I hope to God you're in New Orleans;
the heat so high you could fry an egg.
Sunsick. Get so dizzy you walk into someone else's house
and kiss their wife,
start living their life,
until things cool down a bit.

You forgot to pay an oil bill and some
woman asked about your mother.
She's been long gone, I said.
How longs long gone? No one can say.

Living alone means using one tea bag for
three cups, washing one towel at a time.
I've got room for my sewing machine now
and can knit something fierce, all night, some nights.

Yes, if you're not coming back I hope you're in the dark
French bars sipping something bitter. Alone
like you like it. Your wide tongue grabs a cube
just to hold something while
it melts until it's gone.

the jerk

I will be having the teeth.
I will be having the dessert.
The woman to your left, shes mine.
I kill horses.
I make easy money.
You are most certainly wrong.
I am most certainly right.

There is no room in my heart for you.
There is no heart in this room for you.
You will never be my valentine.
I will have your finest whelp,
your heaviest cloth,
your most ancient clock.
I will have it now.

I forgot your name.
I've met dozens of people who look just like you.
I can see spirit animals and yours in unappealing.
I can see the future and yours is unappealing.
I am going to write, star and direct in my own feature film.
I don't care how long it takes me.

I am going to be immortalized by a brand name.
Your children will adore me.
Your mother will too.
But you will not,
you most certainly will not.

And it will mean nothing to me.

not me ((the) )

condensation and dim cloudscape
that snowcapped the roofs this morning;
body that woke
from the bedding; coffee that worked
like a mind; mouth
that cooperated.

I was on a bench.
I believe I woke up
on a bench.

sun that dried the streets by noon;
pedestrians that walked unperturbed,
or squinting like drunks across intersections,
or leading children along.

white the blinding
brightness, the watery
eyes, no one looked west.

habit that took
home or away from
home for smokes and beer
habit of companion piece
habit of controlled loss
habit of impenetrable self.

I believe
You and I were talking about it.

smoke that clouded
silence that spoke
object that lived
sunset that lit the room—

Crude Oil

Tonight the park was slick and quiet
And I did laps
To make the lake appear more than once—

The black glossy thing almost
Swallowing
The scene above it.

You missed the clouds— they strayed
off like felt; and a fluffier few puckered
Into shriveled moons;

You missed the glistening stretches of open pavement,
And the quiet lawns tucking under the shadows;

And the stillness;
Smell of wet soil and darkened bark;
The hill curving and peaking;
The lampposts keeping their drooped expression;
And my approach
Back to the fastest blackest part of the park.

I thought:
On one of the benches
Facing the duck-freckled lake
We’ll one day meet—


And then slowed to look.

First Moment(s)

What we agreed upon is that we intersected officially on March___. On this night: we considered each other; which was a hard thing to do really, for it was so crowded that I myself had been drifting, anxious to stand. It is true that we might have met earlier, skirted by each other unknowingly— she often thought: if she could remember, if she could just trace back through… just maybe then I would appear in her memory like an overlooked personage in the background of a painting. But alas it cannot be traced any further. It all began when we were dancing and I asked her her name and blurted out that she was gorgeous.

Directly after that I felt a burning shyness that led to my dancing away and far back to the dim corners of the dance floor to tip my cup back and get another and regroup in the camouflage. Regroup: this really had begun just a bit earlier, just a half hour earlier, when loosely we were introduced (without even a handshake) and I noticed her leather gloves and caught her blue eye in the light in such a way that she seemed like a wolf who’d been traveling. Yes in the crowd she seemed utterly unpredictable and hungry and perhaps it is for this reason that I approached her.

I was thinking about the immeasurable distance between us; and I was dancing still, only because I was mirroring her. I was sure that I was seeing.

And already I’ve missed the instance directly after my having asked her her name and confirmed with her that she was from out-of-town (which was in some way involved with my courageousness) when I said I liked her Michael Jackson gloves and she said that He only wore the one and I sank back in my mind to confirm this, and again regroup.

I edged, in my way, towards the unknown. I said what I said.
And a month later we met again, and knew what to do.

Round a corner they came

Remember how the pomegranate trees
dropped fruit the whole year
on both sides
of the peeling concrete wall
and it rotted so quickly in the heat;
and you poked your fingers at the juicy seeds;
and I didn’t even like pomegranates back then?

And if you do—
do you also remember
that pumagas fruit we haven’t seen since we left?

You and me
we’d climb the sprawling branches
and hook the fruit
till it fell.

I’d watch the gentle purple things falling;
Then grandmother’s white head,
and her wooden basket filling.


Remember how the sea raged at the setting hour
when the sky was beginning to red,
when we were packing our things
still wanting to get in— and your lips were salt-swollen
and I was sea-sore but we
ran and got in?

And the Lego cities we built and destroyed;
And the radio show we recorded on the handheld;
And the ritual of smelling each other’s feet;
And how we shot things at people through my window, snickering;
And the lies we told in unison as we got older?


O— you are implicated forever
My brother.

Hold the Phone

Can we just stop a minute and talk

on how much mini cooper
sounds like Winnie Cooper?

how you gravitate toward boys
that look like girls & girls
that look like boys.

On NPR:
A parasite knows it only wants to be inside
the stomach of the cat.
Once eaten by the rodent, the parasite will force the rat to
strange and unforeseen desperate measures;
risk suicide just to get back to the cat.
Rather than fear
the rat will find itself drawn to the feline scent.
For people, it gets a little sensitive.
Infected men are more likely to be aggressive, jealous and
suspicious. They suffer a sixfold increased risk of traffic accidents.
Infected women become more outgoing, show signs of higher intelligence.

31 United States boast Buddhist temples.
We could get a car and drive to them,
take vows of silence and come out clean.
Or I could go alone but it would be a different kind
of vow, all together.

There is a girl at the bar who is telling me the same
parasite makes a woman want to be a cat lady.
I let her keep going; not making sense.
She keeps saying, you see, at some point cats must have eaten us. They
must have just eaten us up. Like it means something.

In Whalan, Minnesota, population 64, they host an Annual
Stand Still parade where spectators walk around the
dormant firetrucks, floats and marching bands.
You know it's over when
they begin to move.

I've been having nightmares.
I am late to work,
I cannot find you,
I am drowning in sand (I suppose the heat gets too high).
Worst of all is the one where my brain is a hotel room jam packed with frivolity.
Real Life knocks on the door and leaves me
because there's just no more room.

Lately:

Every time I go to a job interview
I think
I could be crab fishing right now

Once in a while
when my friends mix up my name
with some one else's name-
jeeeze,
I could be sailing the Bering Sea
right now

when I sense a certain
co-dependence
or my family business gets
slow
I'm all like
fuck
I should have been born in Alaska
We should all be fishing for Opelio
There should be a crab boat named after my mother
There should be a tattoo me and my brothers all share-
something to do with crab
or the boat.
Or the sea...

Vast,
and unforgiving.

Free records in a

box on the stoop. By

Tuesday they have

vanished.

One missing glove must

end up somewhere,

cloth does not melt

into the ground with

snow.

A girl at the bar alone

looks like she's been crying

has to go home with

someone. Bar times at four.

Red swollen neck

skin. Some mouths been

on you. A body will not

swell so on its own.

He said how about that girl.
ahh she's kind of funny.
funny how?
Before she goes on trips she cleans her room so that if her plane crashes her family won't have to dig through her mess.
So she's afraid of flying.
No, she's not afraid of flying. She falls asleep before it leaves the ground.
She's not afraid of flying?
No, she's afraid of strangers going into her room.

(At the bar the men are talking.
I miss you like hell. )

I don't know where commas go
I know horses and children and possums and what else.

I've never broken a bone
but one time it rained keys and we had to hold mouths beneath the road for safety.

I don't know what deja vu is like
I understand slowness to be remembering and speed is to forget.

I'm called a rover
we will eat fit, drink fit and fall asleep without blankets.

I'm afraid that I'm dead
didn't I, didn't, didn't I, didn't I tell, didn't I tell you?