_________________________________________

Vim & Vigor

She shuffles the dating matrix,
dealing deftly for Friday night;
the Cowboy deserves Saturday;
the new guy just took a late flight.

I watch her play with those quick hands,
quite bored, she looks up, mock despair;
just then, then phone buzzes, asking–
she tilts her head; no, not a pair.

Unlucky nights, there is crying,
facedown are old pictures of Him;
business cards pile up, discarded;
a door slams: caprice, whimsy, whim.

She turns up the King of Diamonds,
draws him to her suite though she vowed
not to choose unavailable;
she’ll say, “I hope we weren’t too loud.”

__________________________________

secretion

she slouches toward bethlehem
to be the muse or the savior
she can never remember which

hair mussed, idle, wild, strung out
from the battle with her sisters
for the eyeball, those bitches,

this time, the thread is hers to string
and she will mete out Grace
who sits quietly, elegantly

shapeshifting as she watches
her fertility discharge beneath her
swaddled body heaving

she passes out coffee spoons
for the host
she has remembered: she is eve

_________________________________________

dehiscence

It should have been awkward
you, eating emptiness
me, watching Resistance
writhe through the carpet

(You) demur
weigh the allowance
consider anti-static dryer sheets

Eclipsed, kairos clings to truth
undulating like recycled air
conditioning our exchange

Did we bargain well-
your past for my dehiscence?

________________________________________

a pretty hewn town

and someone laughed, and someone paid
and some one cleaned the mess we made
we knew the chef and so we stayed
and someone laughed, and someone paid
and someone struck, and someone played
and someone slept and someone strayed
and someone laughed, and someone paid
and some one cleaned the mess we made

________________________________________

baked alaska

a classic, torched ending
protected by
insubstantial whites
bound by an agent

a sweet, aching softness
suspended by
crummy supporters
lying prone riddled

a tested amalgam
safehoused until
elegance implodes

the lady is a tramp

__________________________________________

refrain

Troubled, warm, I take them from the machine
the bar smell gone, yours too, too bad, for me
who has forgotten how to kiss or clean

This shirt that clings to my arms, string bean
arms that have seen better days and I see
through the sleeves and your intentions, I lean

Into the thought of us sparring—you mean
to metrically split my infinitive, free
from matching the rest of my outfit, keen

To tumble, warm, like those from the machine
that smoothed rocks into pebbles by degree
lending weight to my pocket; shape the scene

Now, as I walk to the water between
rough edges, the con, current plea
from waking voices bedeviling green

Colorless ideas sleeping, pristine
memory laundered, fashioned tragedy:
a false dry yield—furious to wean
the indigo cotton, the arc of Jeanne