Finding a groove.

a small helping.

Some reason

She’s not shrewd,

smokes in basic form like dieting.

When it gets hot, like one hand

under God, on her knees like

glory be to empty bowels.

Someone is indulging me.

Avatar Review, an online literary journal I forgot I submitted to, accepted a couple of my poems for publishing. Exciting, huh? It’s no New Yorker, but it’s also no WordPress blog.

The issue goes live this weekend (issue #12). On a scale of one to High on Arrival, I’d rate these poems a three, in terms of “revealing.” Judge for yourself: http://www.avatarreview.net/AV12/

night vision.

*I don’t know about this one. Let’s just say, out of sight out of mind.

night vision.

Stomach groans at night, on empty.

Listen to a minor note on ice.

These small circles I draw won’t intersect, and that one’s me.

And you’re the middle ground,

where words curl unkempt like displaced hair in need of plucking.

Call me fruitful,

favor slumbers when our ankles touch.

Some thoughts steep in sunrise,

ours fall down from cautious prodding.

Last rights, I say to books, don’t leave me in mid sentence…..

Do behave like basins. Hold courageous rhyme,

Embolden sleep,

Teach dance and

Find a duo.

You frown upward, I’ll be still.

How I learned to love an A-bomb.

Bordello red smear

smashed, drawled

textbook rhetoric

counting one to five

I silk I pearl I fuck

New titles

damaged spines

no throes blushing

“teacher’s tits”

oh god oh god oh god

Say prudence speaks

to roadways, lines

prefer borders

old now and then

like cows chew

like girls spit

Like trust my hand

beneath your jacket

folds.

EDIT: I don’t think I like WordPress.

Oh my god.

I found some limericks I wrote a while back. They are not very good. Unfortunately, only one word rhymes with ‘Nantucket’ (BUCKET. GET YOUR BRAIN A ROOM).

Without further ado…the tamest limericks in existence on the Internet:

I once knew a boy from Des Moines,

Who winked when he slurred “damn, you foine.”

We girls rolled our eyes

So he spun a few lies

But never found peace with his groin.

*****

There was a young woman from Kent

Who worried her life was unspent

So she traveled abroad

And hoped to find God

Or at least a few sins to repent.

table wisdom.

He’s charming the audience. He smiles like Clark Kent. Please, dear, just solve the fucking puzzle. My mother, breasts heaving, fans herself with newsprint. John Whoever leans in, glasses dangerously close to freedom, says “break the bread, dear, we’re famished.” My purse, a small baguette in gold, quivers.

After school, the missing children call. They want to come home. An automated voice asks them to leave a message. Your call is very important to us. My mother pushes herself erect. Thighs dappled with floral moles. One is Chrysanthemum. One smells like rose. He reads from a manuscript: “Your licentious musk, your wooly bush…” These are the forgeries of jealousy.

The result of tired, restless brain.

NOTE: This will probably be revised later, with fresh morning eyes.

trinkets.

Children’s pools and standing ankle deep in water, we watched the shame run down his legs. Even as his tide rose we wouldn’t move, fearless of wrath and waves or the slap of big hands and dinner served after dark, since we liked cold peas and rolled them between our fingers. No, we waited for him to make a sound and he did after some time. But not the soft whine that reminded us of deflated balloons; he rubbed his knee, rubbed the spot now stained a golden piss, until his hand was covered, a new glove. When he tasted his own fingers and hummed a little, we dropped our gaze, as we’d been taught was the appropriate response to strange behavior. One by one, however, we looked. Someone said gross with a heavy affectation, another tittered in a fat, rude way. It was pretense. We were fascinated. Years later we’d crowd around a fuzzy image of sex and feel the same curious disgust.

lost boys.

Rabbit dash, behind you. My lame heel and flesh on flesh. The excuse is brilliant, I want to go home.

Until dumb luck, we wash, rinse and repeat. Fairy godmothers avoid the stench of age, ours stopped believing.

That’s you and me. Fat containers, cold cuts, an extra charge for shipping and handling.

The French say qui vivra verra. I wrote stories hung from rafters. Ends, as loose knots, suggest temperance. Truncated.

Forgive the process. We fingered winter hatchets, in plural: “he chops wood for fire” while she finishes two thoughts…

Waking up. Or, growing down.

split infinitives.

An iceberg found Australia. Thank God I met you. Twelve hours later,

we call truce.

Random act of kindness: smile for children. Free verse in ramen soup, half-price diets, and

a greeting card that says I love the way you smell after work.

In a box holding kittens, under soft layer, facile, mother. She’s rotisserie

she rotates, she blesses dinner and understands how not why.

Twice, scissors cuts paper. We choose to be afraid. Last line,

is hope.

bone soup.

You’ve left Dorothy in chiffon and beaten. Last year the magazines extended your subscription for being a valued customer. Daily vitamins are stored in moisture resistant canisters and sweaters are packed with mothballs. You’ve eaten in your closet with the sweaters. Sandwiches, alone, and a nursery rhyme about pretty maids in a row. They say “bone soup.” There’s an Asian root shaped like a heart. Tragic stories lack bathroom scenes. You say fucking feels alliterative, Tetris blocks falling at increasing speed. You’ve held babies and lost orgasms. Faith, blanched. TV’s on. The ocean never looked bigger.