I woke up in black and white. This is the way I saw the day my father died, when they told me and my mother and my brother and my sister that my father died. This is a dream I had after they told me my father died. I woke up and went to every black and white room of the house. My mother's room was black and white and empty, and my brother's room was white and empty and black, and my sister's room was empty and black and white. Our dog was gone, and that is when I knew that my father and my mother and brother and my sister were gone. The front door was black and white and open. At the end of the driveway was a man in a black and white trench coat and a black and white hat. I couldn't see his face. I closed the front door. I went to every white and black room of the house. My sister's room was black and empty and white, and my brother's room was white and black and empty, and my mother's room was empty and white and black. The dog was still gone. The front door was open. In the middle of the driveway was a man in a black and white trench coat and a black and white hat. I couldn't see his face. I tried to close the front door. I was pushing hard and it was hard to push. I closed the front door. I went to every empty room of the house. My brother's room was empty and black and white, and my sister's room was black and white and empty, and my mother's room was white and empty and black. The dog was still gone. The front door was open. The man was in a black and white trench coat and a black and white hat. He was by the tree in the yard. I couldn't see his face. The front door was harder to push. I closed the front door. I went to every empty room and every black and white room and every white room with no black and every black room with no white and every room was empty and everyone was gone, even the dog. The front door was open. The man was in a black and white trench coat and a black and white hat. He was on the front steps. The front door was open. The front door wouldn't close. I couldn't see his face. He woke up in black and white.

Tarantismo

Tarantismo

bachelor tarantulas swell over my front porch
after the lazed and fuzzing sun spits them out
every late summer,
like lumbering cacti rolling
with fresh fat legs

whiskered bodies feeling out the quality of the air
orange blue
lying low on nettles
the quality of the women spiders
crouching behind
lichen-crusted, coy stones

there is no one in my house, old fellows,
bewildered in a draining bathtub, lolling
in an armchair, leaning
out a window sighing
loud and earnest
with her eight hands clasped at her
new-blossom breast. no one
dreams of you but me.

it's the dance that does it, the
whirring when spiders rub static
together, the legs interlacing, the fingers

piles of drunken suitors at my feet
winking for the courtship poison

and me dancing off the porch
to get it out

Eating Glass

Eating Glass
(sequel to Eating Metal)

Veronica's face is so smooth
nothing can catch on it
my fingers scrabble at the screen
trying to scratch off the static like scabs,
mottled glass and skin.

Her voice is like the way air swims alongside a bottle
and ducks into the mouth.
I would give anything to give her
an empty glass of liquor
to be eaten on its own.
Would it taste, and
how like salt?
A high glass diet reduces the
distance between

either side of my pumping stomach
like wet and wrinkled paper, heaving
towards each other
crunched glass weighs, the seen space between

Valentine's cards out of thin crinkled paper
red and pink crinkled tissue paper
held to light, shines
when anything heavy
would punch right through

I'd send Veronica a Valentine she can punch through
I'd tell her how
she tints my tissue stomach red and pink

trying to reduce the glass distance between us

gnawing right through the screen

Yellowstone

Yellowstone

Montana opens and closes
the curves of a snake king curled
on its flat and swollen meadowbelly
swell, swing, snake's
head lifts itself to
the wet and wheeling sky
howls
   we be wild.

there is a vertebra in my knapsack
the size of child's fist

   1965 my dad came young and his soul yawned open
   and closed.
   learning early the granite gap:
sky and scraper.

a snake trembles through the grass-
he is the June majestry
and my belly obeys

we see and swallow the whole

this is the bowel-deep motionless sounding
the water swimming and the snake
stroking land

take only pictures and leave
only when opened, only when deeply close.

35 Wednesdays

For 5P. The assignment was to take another classmate's list of daily activities and turn it into a poem. All the indented lines are mine; all lines aligned with the left margin come directly from the list.

35 Wednesdays
     It is only one day a week.

   On the 1st Wednesday, I am
wishing I wasn’t awake. Sweating. I don’t really know
how to communicate effectively.

   The 7th Wednesday we try to
make up.
   but I
read a romance novel
   and it reminds me
of my choice.

I generally enjoy being
   with you but I think you want me
only to stand there,
only to be interrupted.

   On the 15th Wednesday, it
just depends.
   You still want to
enjoy the comfort of my bed.

   The 21st Wednesday:
This is the time
before finishing.

   The 30th Wednesday has the
phone call.
Eight minutes,
ten minutes,
I rush:
Stop off. Leave the door.

   On the 35th Wednesday I realize how
sadly I love
   for
some exciting story,

as if I haven’t brought it with me
as if I haven’t finished.