sex with things

all day long

sex with things

tickling your keyboard breathless

pressing your skirt between your legs

how you mouth your coffee cup

I keep my mind on my own

intercourses, do not envy

the pearls hot on your neck

how you lick that envelope wet

Love like riding bikes

Love, like riding bikes,
takes a lot of confidence,
a little balance.

You left your lipstick on my yellow mug.

You left your lipstick on my yellow mug.
Even after you had washed it and dried it, there it was ---
that kiss you missed
an accidental rosiness on it's rim, like when
you burst out laughing at what I had said
flashing your bright red teeth at me, red
with the soft hearts of the berries
that broke our fast.

Instructions

Do not keep
in a heated cabinet
over a week.

polish

the naming
of nail
polishes
appeals to
the sterile:
for who
but women deprived
would delight
in naming
each minute
shade
Blushing Beryl
Dewy Nude or
Ruddy Confusion
as they have
children in
their imagination

there are
the puns
unforgivable, unavoidable
in any venture
Hard as Nailfiles or
Chartruse with Envy, colors
unwearable except
as mis-
adventure
of being young
drumming them
against resumes
rendered null
by their neon
oranges and chip-
ping greens

there are
names that
taken literally
disturb:
Flaming Vixen?
put her out! names
like Angry Seduction
or Overripe Plum
hint at a series
of glum teachers
of shortest stories
offering
instruction,
hoping
for fame.

Malapropism

Name us
a famous poet --- Go on. Do it.
e.e. cummings doesn't count.
Leave Eliot out of it --- a living one
or it's like they said:
call no man famous
until he's dead.

Milking A Cow

"If an actor knows how to milk a cow, I always know it will not be difficult to be in business with him." Herzog has also previously claimed that when he walks into a room, he can tell who there has previously had hand to udder. Or, at the very least, would. "I can tell from miles away, yes," he confirms. "Woody Allen is not ever going to milk a cow."
~ A GQ Interview with Werner Hertzog

is more difficult than you might think. Like driving a car. I remember being very surprised the first time I drove a car, that you do not simply press the gas, continuously and with the same level of pressure, to go and press the break, continuously and with the same level of pressure, to stop. It came as a shock that you must be attentive to both the break and the gas pedals, pressing and releasing each often --- but equally often you must do so quite lightly, hardly at all. I remember being surprised that the car would continue to move forward when I was not pressing the gas pedal, and that it might slow and slow to a stop without applying pressure to the breaks.

You do not simply pull on a cow's teat. It is more a matter of manipulating the udder in such a way as to pull the milk down through the teat and into your pail. It is not like tugging on a thick bell-pull to call the servants. It is more like massaging the hand of a friend in trouble. Like pulling a friend in trouble away from a fence-line along a cliff's edge --- with compassion, but also with determination. It will feel as if you are doing something to relieve the cow, to help her. But instead, it is something you are doing to help yourself and your family. Voila! Milk!

A Vignette

Two black people were shouting, jolly
in the street. A white man came outside
asking questions, worried there was a fight.

The two black people exchanged a look. One said, "No.
We just talkin'. Everything's alright."

Without regret

Distrustful of such happiness, I thought
to break a window out of our small room and soon
had bloodied both my arms, had cut and caught
my wrists on shards, sharp shrapnel of a ruin-
ation I would try --- did try, and failed to fly or flee. Then you,
you, painstaking, reframed each single pane and turned
and asked me how the light looked then, and left
me still a moment, looking at the sky. My arms both burned
when you took me into yours. (I felt your heft.)
You showed me where the door had always been
and offered to undo the locks, unpry
the hinges that we two had closed together, painted over, sealed.
A brief whiteness passed the window: I turned to you.
Other things have yet to make me stay
like well-marked exits do.

A room with no egress---

or egrets either. An exitless,
regretless room where we regrew, reknew
uncertain innocence together: then ever
gregarious anew,
we both expressed unprepossess
ing love, unpressed. And who
could have guessed that we-with-no-egress, we two
still could be (with all we knew!) egregious
ly without distress---and also with
out egrets.

Still our arms link: A Perfect Plagiarism #2

Perfectly plagiarized from Sappho's "And their feet move"

Still, our arms link

fiercely, as freckled

arms of younger boys

linked then against the

current of time, parting

a circle in the strong

white-flowing water

Coming Down the Stairs: A Perfect Plagiarism #1

Perfectly plagiarized from "Walking Beside a Creek" by Ted Kooser

Coming down the stairs

at daybreak, the still house

filling with light,

you can feel the great joy

of the rooms, their skirts

flung out like dancing girls,

the sunlight streaming

through their wide, white aprons.

vice versa

Casting swine before pearls is also mistaken:

for all their shine,

pearls have no use for bacon.

Something Everyone Should Know How To Do

First you must free your left shoulder from the left strap of your knapsack. It works best to twitch your arm forward suddenly, shrugging inward so that the strap slips down your arm. Slide your left arm out of the knapsack's left strap. Then, grasp the right strap of the knapsack with your right hand, and swing the knapsack forward. Pass what was the right strap into your left hand, and slide your right arm into what was the left strap. You may slide your left arm into what was the right strap as well, if you wish. The aim is to execute these steps as one fluid, continuous movement.

Now your knapsack will be on "backwards." You will be carrying it in the front. Your profile will be that of a pregnant woman (though how pregnant a woman you will appear to be in profile depends on how much you are keeping in your knapsack!). Now you may add to, remove, or rearrange the contents of your knapsack with ease, without having to stop, or find a surface on which to rest your knapsack while doing so. You may remain standing while adding to, removing, or rearranging the contents of your knapsack, or, with a little practice, even continue walking!

An incident

One night, I went to sleep with my heel hurting me.

It pained me all night long. It made me sleep restlessly. I dreamed of it.

When I got up in the morning,

my foot was covered in blood.

Never once all night when my heel hurt

did I think to look at it.

You Might Never Be That Happy

"The most important thing a boy can know how to do," your father had told you, "is how to ice skate backwards."

You had asked your father why. Your father had been teaching you how to skate backwards, and had stopped to make this pronouncement. There was a pond in the field behind your house, one that froze almost solid in the winters. It was small, and it froze rough and warped, so it wasn't good for skating. But it was good for learning where no one could see you fall, and try, and fall again, and try again until you were so numb and sore you couldn't try anymore. And you would go out again the next day, and do the same thing, until you were a good, strong skater.

"Well, a lot of reasons," your father had said, the words curling out of his mouth into the cold like smoke, "First, it will impress people. And twirling is for girls. Skating backwards gives you style. It means you can talk to someone who's skating forward face to face, and that's just polite. But mostly," you remember that the skin around your father's eyes had crinkled up, "mostly it's so you can teach a girl how."

You don't remember what you had said to your father then. Probably you had said that you didn't want to teach any girls. Whatever you said, it had made your father grow almost stern. His dark eyebrows had drawn together, you remember that. Your father didn't talk often, but when he did, it was in speeches. "Trust me. One day you'll like some girl. You'll see her skating, and you'll think she's the most beautiful girl in the whole skating rink, in the whole world. She'll be skating like a deer runs, with those long, smooth glides. And you'll skate up beside her and you'll talk. And you've seen her in school, maybe, but never like this, with the snow in her hair and some red scarf, shining like Christmas with the cold. You'll talk and she'll tell you she can't skate backwards, like it's a secret, like it's shameful -- and you won't make fun of her at all, you'll just offer to teach her, nice and casual. And she'll say yes and you'll know when you put your arms around her, and start to skate backwards with her, real slow, that you've never been so happy. That you might never be that happy again."

You remember sometimes what your father had said, and you remember how it had felt to have your arms around that girl, to be guiding her. And you think how your father had been right: the most important thing a boy can know how to do is how to ice skate backwards.

The bath's a broth.

The bath's a broth.

The tub's the porcelain spoon that scoops me up

and suds and slipping soap and droopy, dripping cloth,

to prune.

And I only even miss you just a little.

The truth is, you were missing a long time before I missed you. When I did miss you, I thought back, and realized that I had been missing you for a long time, though I had only missed you for a very short time.

If I had been reasonable, I would have said See? See how long I've gone without missing you? You have been missing all this time, and I've just now missed you. And I only even miss you just a little.

But I wasn't reasonable, and I didn't say that. When I did miss you, and realized that you were missing, though you had been missing a long time, I started to hunt and hunt for you, to think where you might me, to ask my friends and family about you, even though it wasn't until I realized I was missing you that I missed you, even a little.

He Said, She Said

I.

"I read this article," she said, "about H.L. Mencken."

"Who." he said.

"H.L." she said. "Mencken." she said. "You know. The journalist. Wrote funny stuff."

"Not really." he said.

"Anyway. It doesn't matter." she said. "The point is," she said, "is what this article said---"

"What did it say." he said.

"I'm telling you." she said. "It says about him, about Mencken, you know, H.L. Mencken, that, listen, it says that 'When he attacked'---Mencken---'when he attacked----'"

"He attacked." he said.

"You know." she said.

"Verbally." she said.

"Don't be stupid on purpose." she said.

"I'm not on purpose." he said.

"Don't attack me either like Mencken." he said.

"He didn't attack people. Just, you know, verbally." she said.

"Because he was funny." she said.

"What's your excuse." he said.

"That's not funny." she said. "Not like Mencken. He would be mean but funny." she said.

"Just let me tell you my thing." she said.

"Fine." he said.

"It said---if I can even remember it now---something like 'When Mencken attacked, he left no survivors, but when he praised, it was like Christmas morning.'* That's what it said." she said.

"Okay." he said.

"So." he said.

"That's like you." she said.

II.

"How am I supposed to respond to that." he said.

"I'm just telling you something I thought of." she said.

"Why would you say something like that." he said.

"Look." she said.

"Don't get upset." she said.

"It just struck me." she said.

"How am I supposed to take that." he said.

"Look." she said. "It just reminds me of how you---like, how you make people feel sometimes."

"Are you wanting to tell me something." he said.

"Is this your way of wanting to tell me something." he said.

"I didn't think I was telling you anything." she said.

"Nothing you didn't know." she said.

"Well, I didn't know you felt that way." he said. "And it was rotten of you to bring H.M. Mencken into it. To use some funny guy to tell me."

"H.L." she said.

"What." he said.

"H.L., not H.M." she said.

"As if that mattered." he said.

"As if that were any kind of the point." he said.

"What does that even mean." she said.

"Don't change the subject." he said.

"I'm trying to understand the subject." she said.

"No." he said.

"Look---" she said.

"No." he said.

"Fine." she said.

"Fine." he said.

*

fragment #2

"It's like I can hear her typos." Tim said, leaning back in his chair. "Like I can hear she can't tell the difference between the two 'your's---you know, 'you are' and the other one, the possessive."

"No one can when you're talking," Jo said. "They're homophones."

"You're a homophone," Tim said.

"Don't be an idiot," Jo said.

"I'm totally serious though. I know I can't actually hear the difference, but there's something in the way she talks. Like, she obviously wouldn't write grammatically."

"Does she speak grammatically?" Jo asked.

"I'm telling you," Tim leaned forward suddenly, slamming down the two front feet of his chair, "I can tell it from the way she talks---I can hear that she would confuse her 'to's."

"Like, too, to, and two?" Jo asked.

"I can tell she would confuse them," Tim said, growing emphatic, "And don't even get me started on her 'there's."

"You're crazy," Jo said, and, after a pause, added, "and you're probably trying to sabotage this whole thing with her."

"Why?" Tim said, "Why would I? I want it to work. I want to be with somebody."

"But not with Leigh."

"Yes with Leigh!"

"Not if you're imagining typos when she talks," Jo said.

"Well, why not? What does it mean, the typos?"

"It means you don't think she's smart enough for you." Jo said this looking down into her coffee, blowing on it, waiting for it to cool.

"Well why does it matter if she's smart enough?" Tim leaned back in his chair again. "Why can't she just be her?"

Jo snorted. "Good question," she said.

They sipped their coffee for a while in silence.