high speed mess called life
(self-explanatory)
Illustrated Short form works
Afterwards, in a Florida Motel Room
Falling between two single beds with a hard-on,
he says something really corny and I think
I should write that down
because he’s a poem I might have to forget.
We can’t have sex now.
We both decided
not to have the baby.
A guarantee she will never grow
broken into her heart
like we did.
Still, I can’t sleep,
so I watch this boy poem slumber
Soon he will rise in Florida morning light,
his fierce love hammering at the Berlin Wall I made
from grief and the right decision
And with sweet milk and coffee
he’ll promise
there is no end
to this poem.
Published in: 100subtext-issue 2 - 2022; Unlikely Stories, Mark V
Before Grassroots Closed
The bar still empty enough for a weekday afternoon
John kept pouring me free drinks
He said it was because I had been around so long
least he could do for another old-timer
But I think it was because I remembered Karen
the only woman bartender for miles around back then
The one who died of breast cancer
before anyone talked of such things
We both recalled her mob boyfriend, a made man,
who babytalked when he was drunk
And I pointed to the beat-up photo of Frazier
beaming from behind the bar
The only Black bartender for miles around back then
The one who died of AIDS
before anyone talked of such things
We both recalled him and Wrinkles every Saturday night
dancing on the bar to New York, New York as we all sang along
And John poured me another drink
And the rare light from St. Marks filtered through windows that hadn’t been washed since before anyone died
And for a couple of minutes
life wasn’t missing all the people we loved
Last Night
It was the usual fistfight
my older sister punching my mother as hard as she was getting punched
And I don’t know how it all got started, I was sitting on my bed
Which is where I usually sit when I watch people beating the fuck out of one another
as if each punch was the road to being loved or being heard or being whatever
When suddenly my mother got wild, got wild
I don’t know how she could have pushed my sister even deeper into the corner of the bed
but she did
and I watched her grab my sister’s head and begin
Bashing it
Bashing it uncontrollably against the wall uncontrollably over and over and over and over and…
Like she had exploded at a billion miles an hour into a monster
with no brain ravenous and tearing apart
And my father who never intervened…
because fist fights made him crippled again,
his wife filling up with the ghost of his father, the Ox
there was no winning when the Ox pummeled him into the ground
my father went and married the ghost of the Ox
and even if she was beautiful
and even if he did loved her so much
and even if she did loved him maybe,
he could never stop her even when he was still hitting her or she was hitting him
until one day he just decided to stop hitting everyone
And my father who never intervened
ran into our small bedroom where I was sitting on my bed
which is where I usually sit when people were beating the fuck out of one another
and I watched him for the first time pull the ghost of his father off his daughter
Who sobbed, who sobbed uncontrollably
Because even though her father loved her
she only loved the woman beating the fuck out of her
I don’t remember for sure but I did something maybe for the first time
I took my wool poncho and I closed the front door behind me
Maybe I was 12, perhaps I was 13,
it was definitely winter
and I walked to Essex and Grand, and I got on the Avenue A bus,
The bus driver let me smoke his cigarettes
as we travelled uptown in the middle of the night talking about family
He let me off at St. Marks and I walked maybe for the first time but definitely not the last
into brutal cold looking for home and a break from monsters.
Twenty years later watching Jurassic Park in a movie theater,
I would panic terror that had nothing to do with dinosaurs
And twenty years after Jurassic Park I would ask my sister about that night
And she would say she didn’t remember