We're Coming In Loaded

My coffee mug prints a brown C

that bleeds into the paper placement

printed with ads for auto body shops,

realtors, podiatrists

as I sit here at Nick’s.

Every Thanksgiving I fly back here

to visit my old haunts, nostalgia cajoling me

into torturing myself with meals at all

the bad Pennsylvania diners I frequented in my youth,

staggering through the glass door drunk 
in the middle of the night to fill up 
on greasy food and watery coffee.

Garlands of nylon autumn leaves

droop across the windows and etched mirrors.

Elvis sings, piped in from an internet radio station,

not Love Me Tender or Hound Dog or even In the Ghetto

but his more obscure numbers you never hear:

Joshua Fit the Battle. Three Corn Patches. Rubberneckin’.  

I used to come here all the time with Abby,

and I’m sad for a moment, welling up with regrets,
until I remember that, if she was here,

she would wrinkle her nose at these songs

and mock me when I try to defend their greatness,

would groan and cover her ears if I started to croon along.

The Eagles are losing with agonizing efficiency

on the corner TV, the old men at the counter

hypnotized by the inevitable failure,

eyes affixed to the screen as they fork

wedges of chop or chicken croquettes

into their soft mouths. Like me, they can’t help themselves.
They keep coming back. I slurp my food.

The Italian wedding soup is better than I remember,

though just as salty; big, ragged meatballs,

plump pasta pearls. I must be hungry

because even the decrepit salad of iceberg lettuce

draped across the glass plate

and swimming in gloppy dressing tastes great.

There’s only one entree I can safely order here,

crab cakes made with artificial crab.

Drizzled with lemon they're not too bad.

The waitress, who never recognized me

even when I was a regular,

will bring them by eventually, warning that

the metal dish has been in the broiler

and is too hot to touch, and as always,

Ill find myself unable to resist 
touching it anyways.

Covoiturage

Sparks burned through the tarp

slung beneath the drawbridge to catch

the debris cast by the laborers 
busy doing Lord knows what to the girders,

repairing or replacing them, and all work 
screeched to a halt for fear the falling bits 
would fall into the water, harm the migrating fish

speeding through the congested river.

The company was canned unceremoniously
and the bridge, still closed, sat quietly for months,

bristling with orange cones, as a new

contractor was hunted for.We mumbled 
but succumbed to the detour,

those of us who worked downtown

having no choice but to drive south

half a mile downstream, to the next bridge over,

from which the first could be seen, waiting 
patiently above the river,

white tarp slapping beneath its abdomen

like some kind of flag of surrender.

Below, the salmon passed undisturbed

on their on their way to work, unperturbed

by the inconveniences we were suffering,
the tough sacrifices we were making, 
the extent of the trouble we were taking

to ensure that nothing would interrupt their commute, 
so that nothing would detour them from their route,

as their tiny brains remained focused solely on 
reaching the ocean, our mutual destination.

The Obligatory Poem About Baseball, and Fathers, and All That Becoming-a-Man Bullshit (or, Trying to Explain to Myself Why I Did Not Lose My Virginity Until I Was Well Into My Twenties)

On bright summer nights as a child,

I played catch with my father, 
both of us bathed in a milky wash of moonlight. 
I understood, even at that young age, 
that the glove was a kind of 
substitute vulva,

its fragrant leather enveloping

my pale, tender fingertips.

Puffing with exertion, and shining with sweat, 
my flaccid old man 
would gently lob the ball 
in my general direction

and I would stretch to enfold 
that hard round missile

in the pocket of supple flesh, 
before hurling it back to its place of origin

where it would drill into his mitt

with a satisfying smack. His palm

would be red for days afterward.

We only ever played catch,

neither of us having any idea 
what a man was supposed to do

with such a heavy, unwieldy thing

as a bat.

Sacrificial Version

Her hand disappears, knuckle by knuckle, plunging
up to the elbow into herself. The edges of the sidewalk crumble.
The street is splotched with grease. Green antifreeze oozes from
her undercarriage. Figs burst the sack and tumble
to lie mashed beside the curb.A hungry scarab 
stretches its wings across her chest, feathers
like blades, its turquoise shell centered
on her breastbone. Water bubbles ominously 
in a pot on the stove. She washes her hair in it,
a single strand at a time. 
A cardboard carton of saltines takes up 
most of the tiny bedside table,
battling for space with the box of tissues.
The nightly skirmish sends the lamp 
plummeting over the edge to shatter 
into porcelain fangs on the carpet.
The headboard is drilled with dozens of splintered holes.
Teddy bears dangle by their necks from spiked collars 
with buckled straps, bolted to the wall.
She moans. The floor is covered with a scattering
of wet straw. I haven't seen her for ages, but
I keep her bra size written
on the back of a coat check slip in my wallet,
just in case.

Passenger in a Plane That Never Lands

As the wheels became unstuck

and we filed our restraining order against the earth,

my eyes turned to the tiny television

embedded in the seat in front of me

where on the screen appeared

three attractive women dressed

in business suits, standing in a park,

fighting over a candy bar.

The candy bar flew up into the air

and floated just out of reach

as they silently shrieked and leaped around,

grasping wildly for it.

 

Out the window, far below,

the neighborhoods glowed like rows of coals,

like colonies of luminescent creatures

lighting up the ocean floor.

Styrofoam Stars

Clunky but lightweight, dipped in glitter,

they would crunch if they fell,

if the monofilament suspending them

suddenly snapped with a twang.

I know you’re probably expecting 
some pulpy, lunar crescent as well,

the requisite paper moon, in other words, along with
cheesecloth tsunamis, burlap volcanoes, 
the whole nine yards. But no, it’s just these lousy stars 

from where I sit in this sticky orchestra pit,

spacing out and watching those heavenly bodies,
orphaned after some holiday party, twirl slowly 
from the ceiling of the office 
to form new constellations no one ever 
placed an order for:

the Staple Remover. The Paper Shredder. The Guy

Who Used to Come in to Repair the Photocopier.

Those celestial signposts used to help us navigate

as we threaded our way between the cubicle icebergs

on our journey to the far off land of the supply closet,

the restroom, the hallway where once they kept

a fine selection of coin-operated vending machines.

Not anymore. We’ve forgotten how to read these star charts,

our memories have gone as blank

as the faces of our unplugged computers,

swept clean as a stage after the last ripple of the curtain.

Rafflesia Arnoldii

A hysterical lipstick smack bloodies the backside

of a perfume-soaked missive

posted to me by a smitten bovine blob of a teenaged girl,

asking if I want to go steady, and providing me with her digits

so I can call her to accept this generous offer.

The note closes with the words “Good Night,”

the two words underscored multiple times,

the pen nearly tearing through the tulip-bordered stationery.

Twenty-odd years later I still shudder

when I picture that sticky smile, shy but smug,

so certain I would return the affection

which she confessed to, with the encouragement 

of a counselor, after one of our group therapy sessions.

That bloated blossom, that overripe fruit 

fairly bursting its skin to reveal

the pungent mush festering within.

Even my adolescent self, so sweaty and desperate

for a taste of flesh, was repulsed.

I wonder how many of the girls I’ve asked out

-or, worse, lunged at- over the years, were similarly disgusted

but were too polite to say so,

too composed to show their discomfort.

Perhaps they were just so appalled they were struck dumb

as I was that day, stammering some feeble rejection 

while the counselor nodded in support of our efforts 

to communicate like grown-ups.

I tried to summon some feeling of compassion 

but couldn’t get past her eclipsing dimness. 

The orbiting satellite crashes through 
the thick, noxious atmosphere of Ishtar, of Venus.

And when, on a rainy group field trip

to a music festival, I brusquely repelled her attempts

to force me to stand with her beneath her umbrella,

her pained expression made me wince with pity

but no real sympathy. As much as I loathed

and wanted to destroy myself, I still felt superior

to this lisping behemoth.

Years later, she came into the store where I worked.

Waddling ahead of her was a man, possibly

her father, who was even more enormous. 

Her eyes had sunken into her face

like the cushion buttons of an old couch.

Mercifully, she didn’t recognize me.

That night, the images rushed at me unbidden:

helplessly, I pictured her plump fingers 

probing the folds of her own moist flesh, 

her lips puckering to kiss that reeking sheet 

of stationery, stuffing it into the envelope. 

The fat slug of her tongue, licking the stamp. 

What would it be like to be intimate with this creature,

this woman who will never have a poem 

written about her, much less a poem steeped in passion,

dripping with desire, swollen with love?

For all I know, her unlucky life might be long since over,

her corpulence whittled to a few dense twigs,

unplucked petals fallen from the empty stem, 

etc. I could lie and claim I still possess

that letter, and that the passing years 

have served to made me softer. 
I could lie and say that if I saw her 
now, I’d take her puffy hand in mine

and squeeze it tight, and give to her 
my warmest, gentlest gaze, my kindest smile.