The End of the Year

Spent the last few days of December
squatting in the shitter, expelling what seemed like
a never-ending stream of fecal matter.

It was baffling; my meals had been far from exotic,

in fact, I hadn't eaten much all week.

My bowels became an excremental clock,

striking every hour without exception,

as if my body was incrementally being purged

of the year's dregs, emptying itself out

so as to start off fresh. It could have been worse. 

The other day a woman at work

was heard screaming in the lower level restroom,

apparently trying to give herself an enema.

Of course, it's tempting to make cracks

about these events, and how, looking back, 

they seem indicative of the type of year it's been.

Besides, our discomfort about defecation still compels us

to titter when the subject enters conversation.

But I felt for that poor woman, shuddered at her frustration.

It's hard to move forward when you're doubled over,

clutching your stomach. My own biggest goal in 2011

was to unblock my own psychic constipation,

to stop holding in the lifetime's worth of shit

that had accumulated in my system.

I made a concerted effort to gaze into that chasm,

to face the ordure armada down there in the basin,

and to accept the truth about myself, no matter

how offensive the bouquet. I long to create 

something beautiful from that waste.

Like a virgin roll of tissue, the new year awaits.

Malibu Sunrise

The strands of spider silk that connect us

across great distances in this random flyspecked life
are suddenly drawn tight, like laces corseting the tongue

of a hightop pair of Chuck Taylors,
as he slips onto the bar stool beside me
at the fire hall, orders two highballs, one for himself

and the other for his latest lady friend, 
waiting blankly back at the table for her man. 
I haven’t seen him in years, 

and considering everything he’s been through,

I shouldn’t be shocked at how he’s aged,
and yet I am: eyes popping from deep sockets,

grin gone snaggletoothed and gray.
“I guess you heard,” he slurs, and I nod and ask,
“How are you doing? Are you okay?”
“I’m doing great,” he spits, pickled in sarcasm.

“How would you be doing, you hear some asshole’s 
been going around saying he put his prick
in your daughter’s mouth?” He leans in closer, 
breathing Johnny Walker, breathing kerosene, and mutters, 
“I sit in the car, in front of the house, waiting 
for the motherfucker, and when he steps out 
then all I say is, are you Jesse? And dude says yeah, so then...”
He cracks his knuckles into his palm, again and again.
His forearm is decorated with script, the word Princess:

the name of his daughter, who just turned eighteen.

By some coincidence, it's also the name 
of his old lady, herself just twenty-one,
and still waiting back at the table for that orange juice and rum.
She recently honored him with him another son.
He delivered the child himself, pulled over

by the side of the road on the way to the hospital
a month after making parole.
Another in an seemingly endless series 
of exhausting miracles. 

“The system’s rigged,” he declares, 
savagely tearing at his cuticles
and hocking a great wad of phlegm at the linoleum. 
“Fucking assholes. I got three years probation, 
anger management classes up the butt.

I know I fucked up. No question. I mean, I got caught. 
But look. In my shoes 
you would have done the same thing. 
You know it’s true. I guarantee.” 
A braid of November cobwebs dangles from a vent 
in the ceiling, twisting along with the crepe paper streamers.

My mother trills that it’s time to light the candles. 
It’s a surprise birthday party for my stepfather, 
though later, out of the earshot of his old lady,
he’ll assure me that he was only pretending 
to be surprised, that he knew the whole time, 
and also that if it been his daughter, this Jesse guy 
would no longer be in possession of a full set of genitals. 

But right now, his son, having become hypnotized
by the television broadcasting the game, 
suddenly remembers his mission 
and swivels and staggers away from the bar, 
each fist clutching a cocktail the color of flame, 
as everyone in the hall begins to sing. 
And, downing the last of my drink, I join right in.

Joyful and Triumphant

The cat slumbers in a nest of wrinkled tissue
wadded in a cardboard box. The foil fir
is dark. The lights strung outside knock
against the frozen rafters of the porch.
My girlfriend’s in the kitchen, gossiping with her mother

on the phone. I can’t make out the words,

just her voice’s warm murmur
until the heater bangs on and drowns her out.
I think of my own mother, forcing her heathen children
to sit around the tree and read

that hoary old nativity story  

from the onionskin pages of her Good News Bible

before we could unwrap our gifts.
Distracted shepherds letting their flocks wander,

senile old men mistaking retinal detachment for stars.
We’d recite the testimony of those unreliable narrators 

in funny voices to spite her, to celebrate
the triumph of the cynical over the faithful.
Now, years later, the thrill of victory has faded.

The candle is bright, but does not provide enough warmth

to drive the chill from my hands.

I call my mother’s voice mail, leave a message.

No doubt she’s out at midnight mass. 

The cat doesn’t bother to look up from its cradle

as I rise and cross the room

and, for what little good it will do,

plug in the tiny lights of the tree.  

Election Year (Paperwhites)

Bowls and bowls of them crowd the counter

in the tiny sun room. It’s shocking how smooth

and white the roots are, rubbery tentacles sprouting 
from the bulbs’ brown vellum to search for 
moisture among the black stones.

Oh, it is so cold, and not yet winter;

the Japanese maples still clutch handfuls

of their miniature leaves, the windows

have not yet been brushed with frost. 

The cats flop themselves down

in front of the kitchen heating vent, and I’m tempted

to join them there on the linoleum. Instead,

I stamp my feet and warm my hands

in the wet steam rising from the kettle.

I worry about Edgar, the gigantic striped spider

who’s been occupying the driveway, 
having strung her web between the wall
and the recycling bin. Life will be a little emptier

without her bloated, terrifying presence.

We will have to make do without her comforting menace,

be content to watch the yard through the chilly glass,

shivering in the cold air that seeps under the cat door,

waiting for spring with its batch of baby spiders,

its blooming paperwhites.
 

The Night Before the Night the Levee Broke

     Walking home through the stinging, icy rain, you follow the narrow strip of pavement until it ends, and then you take the shoulder of the road, splashing through puddles, feeling the gravel bite through the thin tread of your sneakers. Soon even that ceases to be navigable, your way blocked by heaps of soggy leaves beaten to mush by the cold rain. The road is narrow and cars whip recklessly around the curve. You wait for a gap then dash to the other side, but you’ve only traveled a few yards when a barricade of tangled tree limbs felled by the storm causes you to stop and scale the slick embankment, the soil nearly liquid save for an occasional root or sharp stone. You heave yourself up, five feet or so above the roadway, and thread your way between the trees. The rain is louder here, ticking against the leaves that carpet the sparse grass like wet paper stars. You cut across the parking lot of a church, an old folks’ home, and up the alley so riddled with stone- and brick-filled potholes it resembles a riverbed more than a road, then finally you’re home and in your dry room, where you strip off your clammy clothes and slip the plastic bag beneath the mattress just as your stepfather’s new car glides up the driveway and disappears into the garage. You grimace the sound of his feet stamping on the doormat, then you think of the plastic bag, and when he stomps into the living room and sees your face he asks you what the hell are you smiling about and I hope you spent the afternoon in pursuit of gainful employment and you just head to the bathroom to grab a towel to dry your hair and don’t say anything. He follows you and stands in the doorway and says look at me when I’m talking to you, and you look at him and you’re close, you’re so close, so very close, but you’re not quite there yet. 

     And the rain is drumming on the roof and gushing through the drainpipes and overflowing the gutters. 

      And you dry your hair without saying a word.

Sure, what the hell, why not

One of the three final designs I considered for Improvisation.

Deep-Fried Demons

Misfortune oozes through the air

this chill and dreadful night in late October,
and it smells remarkably similar
to breaded chicken sizzling in the deep-frier.
Squatting on a stoop, I luxuriate blissfully 

in the irresistible odor of oily batter 
that wafts from the vents 
of the Cajun restaurant’s kitchen.

I can taste that crispy skin, can feel 
the hot grease trickle down my stubbly chin.

The sushi place across the street exudes 
no olfactory evidence

of the hand-rolled ghosts and quiet rice 
no doubt waiting patiently within. 
The flimsy paper lanterns in the window
seem chintzy and unambitious. 

By contrast, the chicken shack is boisterous 
and garishly lit, ejecting a crowd of patrons 
from its noisy gullet.

The chattering crowd staggers along the pavement 

like a brain-addled millipede. Flames flicker

within the revelers’ cupped palms,
lapping  at the tips of their cigarettes.
As they pass, I ask to bum a smoke 
and one of them taps a menthol from its pack,
holds the lighter steadier than I’d be able to. 

Leaves lie at my feet, little solar panels stripped 
and, having served their purpose, 
now find themselves laid off from the limbs 
where they’ve labored their entire lives.

The empty oxygen factories flash their skeletons 
in an attempt to frighten the sated patrons,

but the revelers remain laughing and oblivious, 
their heads swirling with spirits,

bodies lifted into the night, bellies fluttering
with a flock of tiny wings. 

Attachment

A hawk casually drapes its wings

across a November gust

high above the humped back of

the roller coaster

as across the highway

a young mother lets her small child 

pump gas, handing her a wad of singles 

to pay with when she's finished.

The bell jingles as the little girl 

hurls herself repeatedly against
the service station door

to finally bump it open.

The attendant behind the counter 

looks up from his magazine.

Traffic hisses on the wet road. 

The hawk plummets. 

A tree somewhere holds on tightly

to its remaining leaves.

Adam’s Rib, Doused in Turpentine (by Willem de Kooning)

     First you take some wobbling globs of flesh, knead them and pound them, pummel them like dough then press them together into slabs of gooey putty. Then you stretch them, fold them over, twist them with both fists, place in each of their outspread palms a sizzling firecracker. Poke a few puncture wound eyes and slash an afterthought mouth and that, my son, is how you make a woman. 

      Next you impregnate her, flood her orifice with your oozing phlegm, slather her buried eggs with creamy smegma. As the months crawl by, watch her body swell larger and larger until it appears she will burst, but before she does her legs will fly apart and her pelvis will convulse and she will shoot fetus after splattering fetus from her vaginal barrel, until her progeny, all female, stand before her, boneless and dripping, a coven of exploded crones performing rubbery rumbas from canvas to canvas, leaving behind them runny puddles of linseed oil. 

     And then what? What can you possibly do next, standing in the middle of this room, surrounded by all your writhing, wriggling daughters, with their flopping boobs and sloppy twats flapping in all directions, sacks of organs turned inside out, spilling viscous fluids all over the gallery floors?  What do you do when they ask if you’d like to dance?

         I suggest you fucking dance.