High-Voltage Aviary

Safe beyond the chain link fence and barbed wire
loom the jumbled components of the generator.
Like an evil scientist's inventory, or
Soviet dream-house of the future,
the pieces stand, seemingly at random 
though their placement is actually well-planned,
 rods and cones and boxes strung together
with miles of thick cables, and painted 
a uniform non-color.
Above the low whirring rises a cacophony of chirping,
so clamorous I think it must be a recording
looped from loudspeakers to keep the birds away,
like the plastic owls strung beneath the eaves
of an amphitheater. But no, as I look closer, I can see
the bobbing of a head, the flicker of a wing
-birds by the hundreds perched on the wires, the transformers.
With feathers the color of metal, they remain camouflaged
amongst the machinery, performing their symphonies
conducted by some invisible baton
here in the orchestra pit, their electric nest.

49th Parallel

West of Montana Street and due east of Denver
in what used to be an all-black neighborhood
stands a statue of Paul Bunyan, the patron saint of Portland.
Oregon, that is; this city whose name was decided
in a coin toss, then shanghaied and dragged from Maine 
across the Great Divide.
Though he stands thirty-some feet high,
grinning like an idiot, he fits in
with all the other Stumptown hipsters,
with his facial hair and flannel,
leaning forward on the handle of his ax.
It’s just past noon and I’m waiting for the train, 
watching some kids put pennies on the tracks,
and I follow Paul’s gaze to where it rests upon 
the Dancing Bare -the sign of which is helpfully festooned
with a crossed-out cartoon of the other kind of bear, 
you know, the animal, I guess to avoid confusion,
as if customers might expect to find
actual performing animals rather than just
human women taking off their clothes.
The door opens and out steps an angel
-that is, a small blonde girl wearing a halter top
and a pair of cardboard angel wings
spray-painted white. There is glitter in her hair.
She squats on a milk crate and sucks down a cigarette
beneath the banner advertising Amateur Night
and six-dollar rib-eyes every Tuesday.
It’s a trite image, strictly freshman photography stuff,
but Paul can’t seem to take his painted eyes off her,
and I can’t get her out of my head as I ride south,
past the string of old motels -the Viking, the Palms,
and the Monticello, its sign lit with a picture 
of that famous presidential residence, whose facade 
displaced the buffalo and the Indian on the nickel,
though we must be at least three thousand miles away
from Virginia.

Ithaca 1999

I helped heave the barber’s chair into the back of the pickup truck
of the couple who had driven all the way from Connecticut to haul it off.
When they drove away, we slipped back inside the split-level,
with its rose and honey sponge-pawed walls,
where, comically aproned, you cut the crusts from sandwiches
of clotted cream and watercress in a parody of English high tea.
Your spaniel zigzagged across the pasture,
cornsilk ears fluttering like banners behind her.
I slept heavily in the ocher guest room beneath the cow skulls
and mirrors framed with cedar, strung with knuckles of garlic.
That was the last time. The next time
the leaves were turning scarlet on the mountain
and you would throw back the curtain to show off the larder
stuffed with cans, the water purifier, the flour grinder.
Canisters of lamp oil. Bottles of vitamins. Cases of bourbon.
You don’t want to be in the city when it happens, you said.
They’ll be chopping down telephone poles for timber.
The hands of the crossbows counted down the hours
from their pegs above the galoshes in the closet.
Not a barrel in sight, but box upon box of cartridges.
 

Found Visual Poem #3

Found Visual Poem #2

A story about monsters (and the people who love them)

Every city is
a labyrinth,
and as we
weave our way
through the
intersecting
streets, we
sometimes bump
into our fellow
prisoners, all of us
hoping to get out
before Asterion,
the Minotaur,

catches and
devours us.

 




The name 
of this particular 
labyrinth
is Los Angeles.













Improvisation  
a novel in verse, an epic poem in prose
 

Drop Cake Dress

Her lipstick is like the smear 
of glittery dust

from a creamed silverfish.

She taps the jar,

spilling pills into the lid

which she swirls, listening

to them tick together.
Her eyelids drop, half-moon

black smears.

She takes nothing. Remains

hollowed out, with nothing 
rattling within her.

I curl my fingers around

the neck of the bottle,

flip the cap with my thumbnail.

She crumples to the carpet.

She stands in the dry bathtub, 
fingertip tracing a runner 
in her fondant stocking.
When she steps out
I towel her off and breathe 
sour milk into her hair.

Platypus

Tug off your gloves
so I can kiss and kiss and kiss

and kiss the back of your hand 

until it is slick with slobber, then slide my tongue 
between your fingers chewing on the cuff 
of your sleeve my eyes wobble toward you, 
their whites almost blue the veins

in my wrists throb with the thought

of your teeth I am cutting a window 
in your belly peeling back the skin to form 
a pouch so you can carry me around 
I am not a bird but I leave birdlike tracks across 
your powdered forehead droppings I am prying up

the nails with my beak pulling back the boards to see

what’s been buried there I climb

grab you by the scruff and drag

your pelt to the door stuff it

under sure it's good and tight I squeeze

every gushing geyser has its own

story name resumé I pry

open the mouth of every wild 
beast no matter how fierce no matter 
how small or extinct I put my fearless 
head into the mouth of the frog 
the stoat the shrew the hairs

on the top of my scalp tickle the tonsils

of foxes clog the throats of grouse my tongue

pummels your uvula like a fist knocking 
a punching bag you try to extricate yourself 
from between my lips stuff yourself back 
into your gloves the ones that no longer fit.