1.
Click the grief castanets.
Spin your heinie while clacking.
Win a fortune if you clink correctly.
Scald the universe with your castanets.
2.
Grandmother pressed her groin
into my thigh. I reciprocated.
She said homosexuality
was a no-no. Otherwise tolerant
she amused herself with Aeschylus
near an orchard’s admonishment.
3.
If only the pimple had a proper home!
It survives on handouts.
“This isn’t true,” thinks the pimple,
stepping out for delicatessen.
Will the pimple please explain
its scrunched gait, its grandiosity problem,
its lumière nature
amenable to remembering nickelodeons aglow?
4.
At brunch her brass
or copper penis
pops out.
Can’t grab it.
Her penis appears
as addendum,
a groove
inside the diatribe.
Not hobbled, she divides
coffee cake into equal pieces.
5.
The bully across the street
has a dead father
whose petrified hair allows
the trial door behind me to remain shut.
Estate Sale
On iGavel I bought
a blue glass medallion
once owned by Anna Moffo.
Blue glass medallion:
boys go mad. I dreamt
of a student suddenly alive
again, available, acolyte
material, his name
difficult to spell, an “m”
where I didn’t expect it.
Words: collapse, incompetent,
non-coping. More
words: stains, buttons,
objects, littleness, holes,
polyps, aftermaths. All
are sticky. I like this dais.
My desk drawer holds a cache
of father photos—sprocketed
edges. He’s “famous”—
no wonder, like a V.P., I
wear white shirt, string tie.
Little Ode to Incorrigibility
Boy with snot running out his nose,
a disease, head down,
no one knows what to do with him,
he lives near paradise.
*
He steals my clown pants,
piecemeal, through hatchets and flattery.
I worship his requirements in a sex cave.
My mother’s toiletries stand sentinel.
*
Grab incorrigibility.
Electrocute or garotte it.
Incorrigibility originates dance?
Say something offensive involving rivers.
return to SHAMPOO 35