leopard-print swimsuit
Some poems.
Dollar Pizza I was eating pizza in the park when an angel tore out of the sky and floated above my bench. In a voice of a pulsar she told me, The Floridians are marching. “All of the Floridians?” I asked. All who call themselves Floridians, she said, and who wear Pantera shirts like loincloths. When the trees over the hills tremble at their hollers—run. “When?” I asked reasonably. They are actually coming from Rhode Island, but don’t let that fool you. Then she retracted into the sky like a rewinding videotape. “Last time I go for dollar pizza,” I lied for the forty-eighth time.
The Perfect Body Watch me watch a man try to build “the perfect body.” In his garage on a Sunday. Over a work table strewn with metallic fixins. He struggles to explain his vision and evict phlegm from his throat. “It’s not …” cough “… as easy as …” cough “… it looks …” cough “… building …” cough cough “… the perfect body.” He picks up a large sheet of paper too pixilated for me to see what’s on it. “There are no lines to follow; there are no dots to connect.” He tears up the paper. “We won’t need this where we're going.” I squint at my screen. Behind the man is a woman with platinum hair, wearing a leopard-print swimsuit, pointing a Kalashnikov right at me. She stands guard as a new age gets born.
Interrupted Footprints
I squandered my potential
as a missing person
In summer I dreamed
of black eyes in blurry polaroids
In winter I longed
for interrupted footprints in muddy snow
But I just settled
for the least-resistant path
By day I maintain
a strict diet of presence
By night I indulge
in freezing to death
In millennial increments
just like everyone else