The Brooklyn Rail

Inner Beauty is No Booby Prize

think of me
not merely as a songstress
but a songstress
with a sock in it
embarking
on a listening tour
taking it all in
ears open to the
emasculatory din
the choral
impudence of the unwashed
like a knockoff
Basho doll
I radiate a rare
sponginess
my machine set to receive
a thin slice of syllabary pie
napkin verse
and swift to bed
for breakfast
I crush a beer with a
blubbering
leatherman
siesta in the mountains
with the
winged things that
gambol near the
headwaters of the Leith
letting the spirits
and sprites
opine away
while I dream
a semiconsensual run-in with
a handsy puppeteer
I’m okay with being
outplayed
by amateurs
willing to strike an
unbusinesslike tone
if that’s what’ll take
to bring us closer to the
Palladian ideal
columnar
stately
it’s almost too easy to trust
people saying the
things
one wants to hear
almost
and then what
sex in cars
craquelure
as roadmap to the
Black Lodge

The Color Urkel

there’s a fifty-fifty chance
that a person with
blue hair
is aware
that they have blue hair
like a dukedom
or piles
it’s something
that just happens
and when it does
it’s known more acutely
to those
closest to the victim
a steadfast retinue
to be sure
churls
some of them
but supportive
beyond endurance
all clapped out
their faith
reduced to mummery
their conflicts resolved
in lighthearted song
what must it be like
to live in the
meek
certitude of a
non-spacefaring
nation.

A Cheeky Instructor

once called my floorwork 
a kinetic application
for the last bed
in a madhouse
charming
and rather colorful
especially for such a circumspect
old dowager of the boards
but I keep at it
at home
at night
en déshabillé
my ancient unitard
the color of a
spinach tortilla
a child of Puck
my pipe cooling on the banquette
barefoot
I lower myself to
perfect
a loose but elaborate
narrative of gestures
think
Lamaze for mannequins
Mummenschanz for dummies
in one move
in my latest
near the routine’s end
rising from a position of
moral repose
I wrench my head heavenward
a look of pained entreaty
on my face
there was pain tonight
cracked my noggin good
on a low shelf
figurines clattered
some fell
like plates in a bistro
then I broke from the program
twisted myself
to face mine enemy
locking the shelf in a death stare
cocksucker
I called it
for hours now
it’s bassoons when I blink
despite the icepack
the cognac
a flurry of sparks
loop and dart
at the edges of my sight
a stellar nursery
intracranial
and believe me
Nijinsky
no one
of this earth
can outdance them.

We are in

the arrest-as-canonization
period
of American democracy
the
chuckleheads
have stretched their day
to a doughnut
they’re
imbued, finally
with a grand vision of the world
one that
penetrates its mysteries
obviates
further study
everything’s run by a
meatless
godless
ruling class
afraid of the weather
it’s
quite a horse race
blind faith
verses empirical facts
the huckster prince
reminds us all that
buffoonery
is populism
stripped of its Sunday best
it’s a wonder
they are still so fucking
cash-strapped
these good Germans
with their
freemasonry
their pharmacopeia
of hidden truths
like sick folk
locked in prayer
who keep getting sicker
they’re not cute
not just kooky
this strain
of sandbox anarchism
my heavens
it’s catching
always has been
it seems
obesity is the
the number one risk factor
for bad politics
but it’s still Ram season
and the drive-thru
is open late.

Groan Women, Gumming Men

strange
that cruelty
is the abiding state
of the oversexed
consider
also
the elevated rates of
tooth loss
among them
look close
at those postoperative
testimonials
the patients
flashing their pearly implants
the upper-class French
call them
Chiclets
nevertheless
it’s freakish
this regrowth
like an oak felled for the mizzenmast
of a whaler
returning
to haunt its stump
fake teeth seem to point to
some deeper loss
something
traded away
traded away
by people stunned to learn
they still have something
the world wants
look at their faces in the
consultation
shots
gap-toothed
mildly abashed
but there’s a warriorlike
flair about the eyes
a spiritual ripeness
a piratic embrace of the game
and the true spoils
that lay forever beyond it
for they have sent life packing
in wild flight
life at its most monstrous
most rapacious
wounded
afeared
their bitemarks on it
in strange places
sometimes
a broken tooth
left behind
embedded
as signature
as spell
a warning to the prevailing and unborn gods
alike
careful
we bite.