onstructs a genealogy. Who was the mother of Miss B., her grands? The mother drew posters detailing sperm and ova, exhorted her not to smoke and imbibe. The grands taught her to knit items of no utility. (Let it be said they tried.) The family—all too nuclear. Mother hacking quilts backed in black from Father’s […]
From sugar-cloud she sees him, son of the lion-tamer— how he commands those wolfhounds, ignites steel hoops, her flame! She’ll write him letters on onion-thin air-mail as a member of Troop Forget-me-Not, tier of knots. She makes herself up when no one’s home, shaves her legs until they bleed and bleed. Her current dilemma: to […]
Lest you think me a mere mouthpiece for the author—I’ll get her banished and become a B-Movie star: Girl with the Laughing Eyes, Reno Tramp. I slurp black pudding at the altar, implore the duck to roast the cook, students to thrash the teacher. I walk the second line with black indians, rumpus-queen, Moll with […]
Claudie sweetens your tea with little packets of malice while you entertain on the harmonica. Bellmer the marionettist imagines you shaped by his lathe, continues to cathect. Minor poets sentence you to death. If I’d been there, baby, I’d trade my hips for your brain while the spoons rose up against the pans. Laud- enaumed […]
In your city of funiculars, of staggering turns, in your city of drawls hydraulic (yes’ms and no’ms), delusions wave handletter’d signs. In the metropolis, something is always being stolen, alarum itself is commandeered. Even you are a snatched vehicle, vamping in a mink stole, searching the necropolis for souls to galvanize. Explicit Vaudeville. You’ve lost […]
Dear Missus, In the distance, Vegas grows hydroponic from white grit. As an honorary daughter of the Black Aircraft, I’ve seen true alien skulls, hypersonic vehicles, bat crashing into squadrons, the secret flying machines Sabre & Penetrator. Dazzled by Sinatra syncopated fountains, Sammy Davis Jr. afterhours at the Sands, […]
She dances like a bomb abroad. –Emily Dickinson In the end, I wipe the letters from your temple and life spells death. You sink back to silt and mangrove. I might give you up for a nun, resuscitate my man. (I would love you but you are too like me.) For now, […]
Little wheel something gnarls in the blood in our Arcadia of mayflies. We make wine from muscadines, little wheel turning inside my heart. In January after the crop floats to Apalachee other cargo arrives—old men boot-blacked before the auction block. Shawl of cassimere, […]