III.

Things I Should Tell You Before It’s Too Late

Princess Sitting Duck isn’t my real name
I am not one of the ones marred

 

by inexplicable outbursts of an obstreperous nature
Most times I’m a curtain of conviviality

 

Don’t make friends with my dog
I used to collect ideas until I realized

 

I don’t have any of my own
Learn to shirk your duties

 

with dignity I always say
I used to dress in a squirrel suit

 

and play in the forest
where it flanks the railroad tracks

 

leading to the haunted mines
I never reached the rank of colonel

 

You can hold my hand
as long as you don’t lose it

 

I serve drinks in tall blue glasses
I am never sure which principles are mine

 

Sometimes I get glassy-eyed
and pee on the neighbor’s porch

I no longer throw stones at children
I bow whenever I see a high-ranking dignitary

 

stop to ties his shoes
or zip up his fly

 

Princess Sitting Duck isn’t my nickname either

Didn’t They Like You as Much as They Like Themselves?

Whenever I am
humanity’s defecation
being an old
cafeteria dog
said detonation dan
a trampled pimple
in double feature
panoramic head
never properly
doomed
or groomed
when
I begin
coughing flies
a little toy
coffee cup
ladled with lava
catches when voices said
you can’t squeeze
ketchup from a turnip
you just burn up
no can catch up
when you turn up
said wind squeezes
remote control
widow into corner
I said wings rust
a bird red as clouds
suspended in glass
said ones in head
would migrate
to another station
south of anchor
and seersucker
where a blue taxi
(always only one)
pulls its pearls
across evening sky
while many
(this too is true)
different shaped couples
flit about
scooping up tears
some shinier
others not so
they said I was spooned
to wrong stationary object
said I said voices
in heads are never tuned
too open and yellow
to be the sun
bearing its flashlight
down on us bugs
I am a many-legged projectile
flopping into the fire
said voices under broad
brow of borrowed car
its glass forehead
shattered by arteries
slipping out of their harnesses
the kind of strength
you need voices in your head
to turn the tune
back to its extinction
is a kind of paralegal imprisonment
one never escapes ice or its house
frozen in a reflection that never blurs
said voices said ones in elevator’s brain
would stop transmitting birdcalls to worms
voices said voices in head would better
breathe itself into an ant castle
said beetles carry voice’s imprint
on their dotted shells
said I heard myself
talking to you when I was you

Retired Wrestler

Usually, when the late-afternoon sun
thickens, and battle-weary clouds

 

begin resembling recycled bandages
I prepare to hop out on the porch

 

heave my tail over the armrest
and cuddle up to a cold potato

 

I think names have a lot to do
with the station you achieve in life

 

which makes my case hard to explain
I chose not to gorge on flowers

 

but was still elected junior
secretary of the Boiled Hamster Club

 

for which I devised a friendly greeting
Bonjour, I am the turtle

 

from the east
that is not that far east

 

My name is Tonsil Trash
the Delirious Assyrian

Fourth Metabolic Isthmus Sestina

Hair sack is always slick seat
Seat hair sack is always slick
Is always slick seat hair sack
Slick seat hair sack is always
Always slick seat hair sack is
Sack is always slick seat hair

 

Sack mill always slick seat hair
Hair sack mill always slick seat
Always slick seat hair sack mill
Seat hair sack mill always slick
Slick seat hair sack mill always
Mill always slick seat hair sack

 

Mull why slick seat hair sack
Sack mull why slick seat hair
Slick seat hail sack mull why
Hair sack mull why slick seat
Seat hair sack mull why slick
Why slick seat hair sack mull

 

Why mate slick hair sack mull
Mull why mate slick hair sack
Hair sack mull why slick mate
Sack mull why hair mate slick
Slick sack mull why mate hair
Mate slick hair sack mull why

 

Mate taste fast sack mill why
Why mate taste fast sack mull
Fast sack mill why mate taste
Mull why mate taste fast sack
Sack mill why mate taste fast
Taste fast sack mull why mate

 

False last sack mull why taste
Taste false last sack mull why
Sack mull why taste false last
Why taste false last sack mull
Mull why taste last false sack
Taste sack mull why last false

 

Sack always taste slick hair seat
Taste hair sack mull why slick
Sack mull why mate taste false

Fifth Metabolic Isthmus Sestina

Sex thought really all there was
Was sex thought really all there
Really all there was sex thought
There was sex thought really all
All thought was there sex really
Thought really all there was sex

 

Miss really thought you call sex
Sex really miss thought you call
Thought sex call really miss you
Call sex you really miss thought
You call sex miss thought really
Really thought you call sex miss

 

Telephone makes sex call this miss
Miss telephone makes sex call this
Sex miss telephone this call makes
This miss makes telephone sex call
Call this miss telephone makes sex
Makes sex call this miss telephone

 

Fakes what sex call forget miss
Miss fakes what sex call forget
Sex call forget miss fakes what
Forget miss what fakes sex call
Call forget miss what fakes sex
Sex call forget what miss fakes

 

What this sex question call fakes
Fakes what this sex question call
This call fakes what sex question
Question this call fakes what sex

Call question this sex what fakes
Fakes sex this question call what

 

Sex quiz question who makes what
What sex quiz question who makes
Question who makes what sex quiz
Makes what sex quiz question who
Who makes sex what quiz question
Quiz question who makes what sex

 

Question quiz really thought was sex
Sex miss makes what is there
Is quiz question who sex fakes

Infidel’s Romance

Even now I am called Gobi Snow
Sliding unscathed through
eye of a séance’s needle
I became a smooth Band-Aid
Ditto For Brains is my half brother
the other half having been eaten
by the old whiskers lined up
on government-issue stools
at the Blue Crocodile Saloon
Strife is one strip of speckled
flypaper we always swim
toward in Anaximander, Texas
Flickering sparks floating
in the northern sky
My brother and I want
to be held in that cold
hard glue some zealots
still call the world

Written in the Year of the Parrot

Knowing that no two years are interchangeable
no matter how identical they may appear,
why even the skinny, bowlegged,
pimply, ass-eared triplets draped
in shattered shades of last summer’s sadist chic
picking through curiously shaped bones
offered only once during the Paleontologist
Union’s End of the Year Sale for
The Infinite Continuation of the Blue Skeleton Square Dance
can be told apart by the less than brilliant,
they (the town managers)
still managed to run out of animals
sooner than their farseeing ancestors predicted
Perhaps it was the thinness of their mail order encyclopedias
Perhaps it was because of various allergies and aversions
none would admit to having, even when the tell-tale signs
leapfrogged into the dizzying realm of gargantua,
a small but sturdy island few return from
without unusually proportioned stories

 

At the emergency session, the inner council’s oldest members
were stymied until the butcher pointed out
that no one for miles around perhaps
even to the beginning of the northernmost border
would think of dining on parrots those gloves of succulent
greens reds thick in the hand bodies
except (always there is that) those who gathered each Sunday
at the woodchopper’s prefab-made-to-look-like-granite hut
Because Mrs. Chopper hated shopping on Fridays most of all
parrots seemed the most efficient and economical solution
to what would be an otherwise dreary Sunday feast
for the Chopper family and their many color-blind friends

 

As the atmosphere grew increasingly unhealthy not to mention
polluted, the remaining contestants left the Cary Grant Lounge
and began crouching in the corners of the Rover Red Rover Hall

 

The secretary in charge of the secretaries was notified
along with the fleet of newly acquired janitors
the others having absconded with what they thought
was the company safe during the confusion caused by
the president’s teeth and the signals they began broadcasting
from the Final Kingdom of Tragically Strangled Parrots

 

It seems one of the parrots pretending to be dead in order
to gain entrance to the rubber balcony of parrot purgatory
was now manning the five beak controls of the radio station

 

He claimed to be the fourth reincarnation of Mrs. Chopper
but everyone knew that he was lying, as Mrs. Chopper
was last seen crawling into her three-car garage
and thus could have only made two legally sanctioned
reincarnation installments

 

This was before the illegally elected mayor Major Labor
advised Mrs. Chopper to set all birdfeeders on fire
claiming it was the fastest way to get rid of the rubberneckers
that had taken up unsightly residence
in the remains of the nearby trees

Domestic Bliss

If I am as cute as a button
why have you spent the past hour
hunting for the one that rolled down your sleeve

 

onto the aluminum siding bus
carrying rows of disillusioned tourists
toward the chimney heart of our once famous city

 

Didn’t you say that you didn’t like that coat
that the buttons were too big for someone
possessing your delicate bone structure

 

Why isn’t there more meat on this chicken
It’s as if the damned thing began starving itself
once it knew what the future had in store for it

 

Is this what they mean by “organic”
I agree. We don’t need to go on
fighting like this. We could learn

 

another way to fight, one that wouldn’t
expend so many baccalaureates of bituminous energy
Perhaps a nap from which we would wake up

 

refreshed as fish dropped back into a forest pond
Okay, platinum mousetrap of a higher celestial order
one of us would whisper to the other

you get on your side of the rubber volcano
and I’ll get on mine. But before you do
would you mind mending my hind paws

 

I need to get that sand back into my open veins

Emission Control

Maybe it has a mind of its own
complete with winged helmet

 

matching mittens and raconteur sandals
an ivy-covered reef no one else can penetrate

 

Wasn’t that what they used to say about you
back in the days when rubber was the rage

 

Okay, so it has been many years since anyone
has sought solace in an admissions board

 

Still, I don’t remember advising you to swing
your muskrat more vigorously than necessary

 

Yes, by the time I climb out of the new bathtub
I have succumbed to your most recent accusation

 

I am a lizard, complete with long green tall
that flops whenever I want it to flip

 

When you were in front of the main post office
did you know that the lamp post

 

was going to step off the curb and invite you
to the annual fishermen’s fox trot

 

and wrestling match
The women living in the motel

 

say he stopped painting one day
that the world caught up with him

leaving him to contemplate
its imponderable residue

 

I am not sure they (or anyone else, for that matter)
know what he was talking about

 

Either my teeth have gotten smaller
or my mouth has gotten bigger

 

I fear it’s the former
when I should be afraid that it’s the latter

 

or ladder that pulls me through the sky
to a small crooked castle

 

I spied upon the other day
when I was dancing around the compost heap

 

Why do I have this compulsion
to set the front door on fire

 

when finding my keys would be easier
I collect things which are suitable

 

for breaking open walnuts,
one of the dozens of foodstuffs

 

my body doesn’t find acceptable
and how can I blame it

 

when I am always lecturing the flowers
I have stolen from my neighbors

I have no other news to tell you
or your hired double

 

that wax snow creature in a country coat
as I have obviously thrown

 

whatever it was I once knew
in the grave of my pet violin

The Secret Life of a Statuette

Woof it’s hard having so many arms and heads
a fan of limbs holding aloft a yellowed ivory sun
tear-stained from years of uninvited fondling

 

Is this what it means to represent a minor deity
full of lightning jumbo landing nearly beside myself
What about these piers of leaning grief

 

I am supposed to survey with dignity
cloaked in the latest epoch’s designer chain mail
Nobody ever told me that being strangled

 

was the surest way to leave indelible marks
maybe even a few emotional scars
on the bony digits of those

 

who pursued me drunken elephantine
peasants crashing the sky with candy bars
named after your unmoving flesh

 

and wide cold flashing smile
teeth ready to nip and tuck
their daily ration of muttonchop clouds

 

tendrils filled with flies and magazines
it must be the pages are tastier
than porcelain mushrooms

 

salvaged from extinct lakes
from the mountains of New Mexico
from the flower pots of Upper Topeka

Istanbul Orinoco Savannah
rancid bent bunched stubborn
my long tawny branches greet

 

the confusion of sand and tall grass
men climb down and lurk for hours
caravans unsavory goods waterproof

 

bonnets remedies for unabashed excretions
moustache menders I tried to be upholstered
become sedentary a pillowed griever lounging

 

my lucite embraced heart
siezed by subpoenaed clods
their maws of redistribution

 

crammed with leftover canapés
porkchops from around the world
I was going to write you

 

when the time but it never did
change its mind or mine about
where the lotus sash should go

 

what kind of comportment is necessary
to uphold the world while those
inhabiting it the furious puppet ants of America

 

the docile beetles of Belgium are nibbling
Get out of here you gratuitous vermin
Go back to the Hackensack of your gravy

One Hundred Views of the Outskirts of Manhattan

An immense copper moth
enters the new firehouse

 

The sole refurbisher of car
upholstery clutches his throat

 

Alone on East Nightingale Road
just past Knot of Hope Circle Inn

 

The worms are able to abandon
the municipal golf course

 

two days before the edict
is delivered on their behalf

 

I like to retch in hardware stores
near the shelves of plumbing supplies

 

Night blooming cereus
baloney on rye toast

 

Horses don’t get up and make speeches
the way they used to

 

Another bowlegged champion circles his prize
Among the various rungs of lower perfection

 

that are easily available, I favor
shiny liquids sold in shopping malls

 

My particular specialty
small leaks in the veneer

I am paid to make them seem
like they are necessary

 

to the latest rise of fragrant decay
Have you ever stopped and noticed

 

the residue of vaporized memorandums
collecting on the duck pond

 

Recently, I decided it would be wise
to postpone my efforts to verify

 

the oracular veracity of fortune cookies
stuffed with three or more fortunes

 

I studied philosophy
until I fell asleep

 

Pineapple clouds stored above
the empty kindergarten

 

I don’t believe walking to work
is a legitimate way of losing weight

 

A policeman carrying a shield
approaches a bulldozer

 

parked on the wrong side of a ditch
I am not one to count sheep

 

for fear this hideous beast
might mistake my sleeplessness

as a sign that I want
to interrupt his pilgrimage

 

to have him tell me
a beautifully sordid tale

 

beneath a rinsed
junk dog sky

One Hundred Views of the Port of Baltimore

An air-brushed statue of Edgar Allan Poe
blows snot at an obstinate seagull

 

Two ex-firemen argue over
embroidered biscuits

 

The kind you keep
in the crevices of your pocket

 

The kind you bury
on rainy summer evenings

 

when overweight coyotes
quaff hummingbird wine

 

beneath a rotted oculus
The kind you float

 

on an artificial lake
when the swans become

 

signs of the swans themselves
The one who resembles me

 

scours book bins for traces
of transparent horoscopes

 

insect pornography
pages stored inside

jars of invisible ink
He says he has proof

 

Egypt vanished
during a civil uprising

 

only to reappear
thirty-three feet to the left of the Nile

 

I knew it was time to quit the factory
and join my ancestors

 

I moved into a thrift store
I began shopping every day

 

Nothing I did changed
what I did

 

When I burned the toast
or misplaced the roast

 

dolls winked
and stuffed animals cried

 

titillated as burning twigs
looking up a marshmallow’s skirt

 

A hooded woman reputedly blessed
with the gift of prophecy

enters a public bathroom
never to be seen again

 

His first reaction was normal
Gold threads lead a dragon into a crayon chimney

 

Two mirrors—empty as teardrops—
emerge from beneath tomorrow’s ruined sky

Anonymous Self-Portrait with Wounded Chickadee

Before the final operation
I have to wear my doctor’s

 

see-through dress
to a lawn party

 

overpopulated with dizzy revelers
and ritzy developers

 

I thought the invitation was extended
to someone else with my name

 

someone who was neither my shadow
nor my doppelganger

 

but much closer
than these used bandages imply

 

In the aftermath of suburban spotlights
and haunted forests advancing around

 

the procession of words
used to lure guests

 

down a pebbled driveway
inky undergrowth spreading in all directions

 

Mosaic trees, scumbled mountains, ploughed sky
I was a rubber stone in a window

 

its glass jaws ajar

Autobiography in Pink and Blue

My devotion to the federation of nincompoops
causes me to reconsider the sky’s one-way hotel
and how its revolving lobby could be improved.
I already saw the belly snoopers coming,
an army of cold demands and limpid logic
headed over the hill. The hill stood its ground,
but I shifted all my operating mechanisms east.
I sold used tires to those who needed them
and to those who didn’t, but would one day
thank me for accepting their ill-advised hospitality.
I rent a fading room in a broken town
one first catches sight of in pictures
dead strangers sneak onto trains and buses.
The clocks shudder, the windows shake
and the birds hit the few notes they know how to hit
without falling out of the last intact collection of trees
to be found in an urban grid without courtyards or cul-de-sacs
which is to say a conduit through which there
is an endless flow (or flush) of the upright and downtrodden.
I stopped counting the days but not the minutes.
I grow to like the fact that no one ever gathers
around the headless statue which greets everyone
entering the harbor without an umbrella.
Okay. Okay.You want to know. Well, all right,
I am not an Egyptian napkin. I’m not even
a retired cosmonaut or guileless barber.
I am neither an escapee from the House of Grubb
nor an inmate from the Home of Hubbub.
I don’t sell spotted black petunias to men with yellow breath.
I don’t plan farewell parties for others. And yes someday
I will be nice and mail back your teeth.
But in the meantime, would you quit kicking my pastry?

Autobiography in Red and Yellow

I was born in Shanghai
peony bicycle harbor

 

twilight zodiacal boulevards
where all poets and their

 

perilous possibilities
are tossed ashore

 

As is the custom
I never studied

 

accordion bassoon
or fabled tambourine

 

wooden instruments
which rest above

 

a marble fireplace
in the minds of those

 

who weren’t born in Shanghai
In the Year of the Adamant Aardvark

 

we dressed in the plainest idioms available
lest we found ourselves

 

chained to a statue of a discredited ancestor
of which I have many

 

according to the chart recently downloaded
from the Ancestor Registry and Radio Tracking System

I was born in Shanghai
shortly after one cylinder of war ended

 

and another revolution
in barnyard fashion began

 

In my youth I spoke
with forked tongue

 

and ate with forking sticks
I was born in Shanghai

 

during the month
obesity runs rampant

 

and tractor operators
embrace their tractors

 

and their snowshoes
but now it is almost

 

the Year of the Lighthearted Howitzer
Will we ever learn to wash our hair

 

with oils extracted
from the stones

 

we used to blast our enemies
I was born in Shanghai

where there is a genuine franchise
on every corner

 

Our wits are short
but our tongues are long