perv

I’ve been scanning for
sex poetry. Warm thighs
and breathy metaphors, pressing.

Sex at whatever: noon is best
and the sleep that floats in following.

heart

I am thinking of
of a small bird in my palm,
her chest open,
her tiny heart fluttering --
the size of pebble -- soft and
with so many chambers,
designed for flight,
fluttering in my palm.

central

winter bridge

intersection

To satisfy Jesse’s curiosity: My pencil, his Jesus.

after

you slept all the time

and we were hardly ever sober

we put on weight and ate coco flavored

puffed wheat, watched films

and I don’t think it was ever a very healthy thing

but the big orange cat was so sweet

and he let you put hats on him and take his picture

and we called him moses because we rescued him and

that was his name

and we never changed it

I took video of the dirty dishes that Thursday

and now it’s sad to watch it over

and remember how the kitchen

smelled of gin and juice with tacky counters

and sometimes when I’m in a gas station

and I’m looking for you in Vancouver,

even puffed wheat breaks my heart,

because it’s sweet like gin and juice

and the orange cat with a silly hat on

har har

blackout

cars move in inches
over the bridge, the traffic lights
blacked out,
swing violently from wires
as wet leaves stir in whirls
at the eyes of intersections
everywhere
people are moving
toward their homes
in the dark and
without order

puddles froth in the wind
with white foam rising
in fish-skin moonshine.
the football field by my house
becomes a chopping lake
of mud and rain

the city is apocalyptic in the dark:
with no electric whirr and hum,
twigs snap crisply in clean air,
candle-light glows warm from windows
and no one draws their curtains in the dark

by midnight the animals leak
from blown-bare trees and roiled creeks
I see amber flashing eyes and
breath that lifts in plumes
from out the underbrush
soft feet pad on needles and black detritus
as the wolves close in
and the tree roots wrap around,
crawling closer to your living-room
in the blackout

no more shows

tree

from "Margaret Mitchell's Daughter"

"i practiced being significant
while listening to Leonard Cohen
You know the routine
signed up for yet another course
studied to become someone
mastered in recycled guilt
earned a phd in nice"

--Joan Hoekstra

Shoe Filling

She doesn’t know how
it happened looking at
the visa bill quivering
in her hands. She is a
sensible woman: fingering
her mother’s pearls
and tapping her comfortable,
affordable shoe on the
kitchen linoleum. She
goes to the back of her
closet where she hid the
offenders still in their box:
She lifts the lid and there
they are, sleeping in
white tissue that crinkles
as she pulls one out.
Turning it in the dim
light of her bedroom,
it glitters – the heal hard
and straight in her
loosely closed fingers.
She puts them on, tucking
the tail of the strap into the
tiny buckle at her ankle.
She goes to the mirror
and sees the lift in her calves,
the line of muscle that
springs to life and runs
down the length of her slender
legs. She bites at the nail
she manicured herself,
looking down at the shoes.
A week’s worth of groceries
Her brow furrows and
the toes point inward involuntarily.

midsection

She loves things for the sake of loving them,
and sometimes (i suspect) to say L.O.V.E
in a low voice with vowels heavy -- like wet wool.
I often felt like a coveted handbag in her arms:
Beautiful and Trendy with a capital T.

museum city

Museum city smells of damp pine
in the early morning,
before the blacksmith
stokes the fire into a thick smoke,
before the actors have laced corsets
and the wood stoves are hot.

In Dr Watt’s house there are narrow stairs
where his bedroom waits for him.
An open bottle of scotch in the saloon
has his fingerprints where he left them,
the scent of his juniper cologne still hanging.

A hairbrush at the brothel has
settled near leggings and
dirty tousled linens,
all fallen like dust
for a century untouched.

Red trees lean in
over the dried up bed of
a diverted river
the water gone elsewhere --
like empty clothes and rooms,
with the breath squeezed out.

womyn

pater

Stacks of newsprint, black and
white rustle soft in hard hands.
He clears throat, British-like
more than ever in his mid-
fifties, speaking silently of growing up
post depression i think tweed shorts
and a haircut to keep head lice away
WB Yeats is ringing
in the bee-loud garden now for him
the work is not over yet,
there will be no rising and going yet.

He boils oats and reads books
build : break-down : brick-lay
the family home
his name hung in wood grain
with a purple thistle accent

In the early morning he
lives alone
feet pad on hardwood floor
he knows so well it does not protest.
At five am he feeds the cats
and sighs out the door.

nozenber

g nome

who can resist a garden gnome in a reclining posture?
not me.

commuter

skimming over treetops
i’m blank-hearted
at six am
the dawn is mauve
thinking salt water this suit
doesn’t suit me

CONFLICT RESOLUTION
By Leslie Sheffield

We no longer talk, although we
still send signals. It's not a problem
of distance. If I turned
a few degrees I could see you
not seeing me.

Inventing stories offers some
resolution. We can twist
the truth any way we like.
In fact, I like you better
since I wrote a happy ending.