Wire angels of death hang outside the governor’s mansion
Lucifer clones hovering over Mrs. Governor as she decks the tree;
gazing into her handblown glass bulbs
she barely notices reflections of the gaping faces of Darfur
staring back as her son asks:
Does Santa go to Africa Mommy?
She hangs the bulbs distorted with faces as she answers blithely,
No honey they don’t believe in Christmas over there.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Little Princesses
They are all
plastic pearls and sequin tiaras,
twinkling tulle skirts afloat
on the sea of pavement,
battery-powered magic wands
flashing kaleidoscopic
upon topiary hedges
manicured into griffins and unicorns.
They dance and twirl, oblivious
to smudged streams of passersby,
an impressionist backdrop
for an asphalt courtyard
beneath clacking vinyl heels.
Little princesses, when you retire to your cotton candy pillows
and shimmering sheets,
clutch your glittering wands and
hold fast to your virginity.
plastic pearls and sequin tiaras,
twinkling tulle skirts afloat
on the sea of pavement,
battery-powered magic wands
flashing kaleidoscopic
upon topiary hedges
manicured into griffins and unicorns.
They dance and twirl, oblivious
to smudged streams of passersby,
an impressionist backdrop
for an asphalt courtyard
beneath clacking vinyl heels.
Little princesses, when you retire to your cotton candy pillows
and shimmering sheets,
clutch your glittering wands and
hold fast to your virginity.
Halloween Night
Once upon a time the bodies on the neighbors’ lawn
were just vinyl heads and limbs drowning in strawberry syrup.
Ghosts were old white sheets splotched with Magic Marker and skeletons were plastic joints strung together with invisible thread.
Twenty years later the evening news spun polyester webs
over the slaughterhouse next door because no one ever asked to be a suicide bomber for Halloween.
were just vinyl heads and limbs drowning in strawberry syrup.
Ghosts were old white sheets splotched with Magic Marker and skeletons were plastic joints strung together with invisible thread.
Twenty years later the evening news spun polyester webs
over the slaughterhouse next door because no one ever asked to be a suicide bomber for Halloween.
Nightchildren
It was August ’87 and we were invincible phantoms of sequins and smoke bathed in strobeflash writhing thrashing headbanging to glamrock hair metal peroxide blondes with faux-hawks and kabuki makeup taking drags on their joints all safety pins and leather leggings swaying boyish hips to the pulse in the marijuana haze shaken with vodka and everclear swigged by rockstar wannabe renegades eyes glazed over by the mirrorball foreheads beading droplets of neon panting gyrating hips grinding against young things in demibras pumped with silicone chemicals and hairspray body heat choking deafening slicked in leather-tinged sweat clash of metal against heavy metal in the orgiastic blur of narcotics and blood the young and immortal quick never dead— fuck we were invincible.
Holiday
A hard glare
blazes off of rearview mirrors
dissolving into facets of
rhinestones set eye sockets
glinting once through the blizzard;
She lusts after plastic
custom giftwrapped with a flourish
of aluminum shreds clinging
from the tinseled displays and
nightmares of sugarplums
she wants more;
Arms hung with
bedecked beribboned bags
she elbows through the glitter storm
drowning in tissue paper foam
still wanting more.
blazes off of rearview mirrors
dissolving into facets of
rhinestones set eye sockets
glinting once through the blizzard;
She lusts after plastic
custom giftwrapped with a flourish
of aluminum shreds clinging
from the tinseled displays and
nightmares of sugarplums
she wants more;
Arms hung with
bedecked beribboned bags
she elbows through the glitter storm
drowning in tissue paper foam
still wanting more.
Stone Point
Local lips
zippered shut about
that forsaken place;
decrepit house
shrouded in dust
abandoned and
disintegrating into
ivy and woodbines
I was five years old
mesmerized
by the window
with the bullethole
something happened in this house
glass shattered into a spiderweb
veiling the face
of a mannequin
gazing into oblivion
molded mouth
would not divulge
something happened in this house
secrets shredded
by sputtering engines
blacked out by
inkwell skies reflected
in vacant holes of
mannequin eyes
pierced my ears something happened in this house
silence shrieked
specter of
spiderweb glass
eye socket voids
dumb mouth
something happened—
zippered shut about
that forsaken place;
decrepit house
shrouded in dust
abandoned and
disintegrating into
ivy and woodbines
I was five years old
mesmerized
by the window
with the bullethole
something happened in this house
glass shattered into a spiderweb
veiling the face
of a mannequin
gazing into oblivion
molded mouth
would not divulge
something happened in this house
secrets shredded
by sputtering engines
blacked out by
inkwell skies reflected
in vacant holes of
mannequin eyes
pierced my ears something happened in this house
silence shrieked
specter of
spiderweb glass
eye socket voids
dumb mouth
something happened—
Eleven
I lost my innocence to a stick of incense. It was August right before sixth grade and eighty degrees outside but sixty-seven in the mall; I wore jeans and a striped shirt with a heart-shaped zipper pull. The incense, lurking in a corner of a headshop, introduced itself as Sex on the Beach and enticed me to rub some on my sleeve; the moment it touched the fabric there exploded a blinding flash of bodies basted in coconut oil, writhing on the sand in the glow of boardwalk lights. My mother had to scrape me off the floor and drag the pieces across to the Macy’s juniors’ department. I had just regained consciousness when a nearby mannequin with jutting plaster-of-Paris clavicles glared at me from the hollows of her eyes and seethed that my body was inadequate for boys; from that day on I vowed to metabolize oxygen and drink moonglow until fat displaced the tissue padding stuffed into my training bra. I tried it the whole month of September and ended up whoring with a chocolate cake brought to English class by a cross-eyed kid who swore to buy me lingerie on my birthday and wanted to slip his quarter in the slot machine keychain dangling from one of the zippers of my backpack. I longed to run from the room but the cake whispered that every devilish bite of sugar and ultra-hydrogenated fatty acids would send me faster through puberty to collect the swelling breasts and womanly hips that everyone with a cunt was entitled to around my age.
I believed it until I woke up to the radio alarm streaming RuPaul’s morning show, still flat-chested and girdled with a jelly ring.
I believed it until I woke up to the radio alarm streaming RuPaul’s morning show, still flat-chested and girdled with a jelly ring.
The Whore of Babylon
Our Sunday School assistant was a mermaid. Or a siren or a gorgon. Her Lady Stetson had a bottom note of saltwater.
She was seventeen and wore hair in a high chignon; two strategically placed curls molded with Dep gel fell on either side of her hairline. Her lipliner was a shade darker than her lipstick. She wore a royal blue sequin jacket and sequined big-girl pumps that snubbed the flat rubber-soled Mary Janes all the girls in the class were strapped into. A patent Mary Jane whispered to a suede one that the blue sequin pumps were conspiring to teach all the Mary Janes how to swim. Meanwhile, the mermaid’s glossy mouth spoke of the Immaculate Conception.
Halfway through class, a boy with a trident knocked on the door and asked for the mermaid. The mermaid claimed she knew him just as Adam had known Eve in the Garden of Eden.
Saltwater flooded the room.
She was seventeen and wore hair in a high chignon; two strategically placed curls molded with Dep gel fell on either side of her hairline. Her lipliner was a shade darker than her lipstick. She wore a royal blue sequin jacket and sequined big-girl pumps that snubbed the flat rubber-soled Mary Janes all the girls in the class were strapped into. A patent Mary Jane whispered to a suede one that the blue sequin pumps were conspiring to teach all the Mary Janes how to swim. Meanwhile, the mermaid’s glossy mouth spoke of the Immaculate Conception.
Halfway through class, a boy with a trident knocked on the door and asked for the mermaid. The mermaid claimed she knew him just as Adam had known Eve in the Garden of Eden.
Saltwater flooded the room.
Erotophobia
My neighbor first told me what it was; I was seven and she was eight. Her brother and his friends were outside assaulting each other with 15-yard jets from their Super Soaker 2000s; she said it was something like that. Something like Hiroshima. A nuclear warhead rips your insides apart and the floodgates gush strawberry syrup. If something congeals it expands into a spongy mass like one of those quarter-machine magic dinosaurs you would leave in a glass of water next to the bathroom sink overnight. And then you became the moon.
The voluptuous moon materialized in every shadow and crevice from the mailbox to the heater vents to the TV antenna. I smelled it in the laundry detergent. It leapt through my mirror and bounced across the walls after dark. One morning I could have sworn I’d swallowed it overnight until I realized I could still see my feet in the shower. By Halloween the neighbor woman had ballooned into two moons. She was confined to a donut sofa full of daytime soaps and consigned to pants with elastic waistbands. For exercise she swam in takeout boxes. Rumor had it her husband tried to carve her into a jack-o-lantern when she ripened enough. When I spied her through the forsythia bushes dividing our yards, the reflection of the man in the moon flashed me a paralyzing grin.
And then I forgot about it.
Three years later I was sitting in health class when I saw the moon rising from the radiator across the room. It was then that I realized there was no escape. I further realized it when the ancient nurse who helmed the class, with the jowls of a Saint Bernard and round glasses whose paperweight lenses morphed her into a giant housefly, rasped it through her crepey lips. Before we could accost her with questions she buzzed out the window.
From then on I walked the halls with my legs glued, because I knew that in their jeans pockets the boys concealed missiles that fired at will. It was Hiroshima all over again. With every measured step to the cafeteria or the computer lab I was dodging missiles and radiation. And then I saw that all of us girls were radioactive and that the lemons and oranges and tangerines we tirelessly compared in the locker room before gym class were ticking atom bombs. It was a grand celestial design; we were being trained to reflect sunlight from the other side of the earth. Pamphlets claimed it was the Venus de Milo phenomenon but I knew better. We were being primed to be transfigured into the moon.
Outside a lunar eclipse was threatening.
The voluptuous moon materialized in every shadow and crevice from the mailbox to the heater vents to the TV antenna. I smelled it in the laundry detergent. It leapt through my mirror and bounced across the walls after dark. One morning I could have sworn I’d swallowed it overnight until I realized I could still see my feet in the shower. By Halloween the neighbor woman had ballooned into two moons. She was confined to a donut sofa full of daytime soaps and consigned to pants with elastic waistbands. For exercise she swam in takeout boxes. Rumor had it her husband tried to carve her into a jack-o-lantern when she ripened enough. When I spied her through the forsythia bushes dividing our yards, the reflection of the man in the moon flashed me a paralyzing grin.
And then I forgot about it.
Three years later I was sitting in health class when I saw the moon rising from the radiator across the room. It was then that I realized there was no escape. I further realized it when the ancient nurse who helmed the class, with the jowls of a Saint Bernard and round glasses whose paperweight lenses morphed her into a giant housefly, rasped it through her crepey lips. Before we could accost her with questions she buzzed out the window.
From then on I walked the halls with my legs glued, because I knew that in their jeans pockets the boys concealed missiles that fired at will. It was Hiroshima all over again. With every measured step to the cafeteria or the computer lab I was dodging missiles and radiation. And then I saw that all of us girls were radioactive and that the lemons and oranges and tangerines we tirelessly compared in the locker room before gym class were ticking atom bombs. It was a grand celestial design; we were being trained to reflect sunlight from the other side of the earth. Pamphlets claimed it was the Venus de Milo phenomenon but I knew better. We were being primed to be transfigured into the moon.
Outside a lunar eclipse was threatening.
Valse Melancolique
I was
waltzing with razors
on a precipice
when
I found you
splayed across
a mirror,
bulletholes for eyes—
Light struck the glass at the pivotal point.
Nine skeleton keys
loomed in your doorway;
one struck me in the
solar plexus but I kept
sashaying across a blade
to your fingertip
when I tripped and hurtled
through a crevice in the
floorboards—
Laughter of scissors.
Emerging,
I implored the pendulum
for an answer
but it only echoed
that I should have
looked in the
mirror.
waltzing with razors
on a precipice
when
I found you
splayed across
a mirror,
bulletholes for eyes—
Light struck the glass at the pivotal point.
Nine skeleton keys
loomed in your doorway;
one struck me in the
solar plexus but I kept
sashaying across a blade
to your fingertip
when I tripped and hurtled
through a crevice in the
floorboards—
Laughter of scissors.
Emerging,
I implored the pendulum
for an answer
but it only echoed
that I should have
looked in the
mirror.
Dead City
Methamphetamines shower
peeling billboards blurred by smog haze;
a drunk swaggers through the last greasy drops of sunlight leaking into the gutter with booze and gasoline;
yesterday’s lottery tickets strewn among beerbottle shards,
wasted as vagrants outside the laundromat
snorting powder that could pass for soap flakes
and swigging moonshine in the lurid glow
of streetlights buzzing half-extinguished,
every door another slot in the mausoleum.
Backalley philosophers and sewer prophets
sucking on the last dregs of their joints warned all the children old enough to kick a can or syringe into the gutter:
Ain’t no miracles round here kid
and if you see something rising out of the shit and filth
don’t fool yourself it’s just the stench
even that moth buzzing in the streetlight there
knows it ain’t really the moon
you wanna dream see that fortuneteller
Christianne or Christine or Christmas whateverhernameis
behind the Dumpster there second floor
right above the convenience store apartment 2A
one with that string of blue lights in the window
she’ll map out some sort of future for you
course she’s blind in one eye
Eyes live to believe they don’t see what they see:
bottle smash siren shriek lightbulb explosion
masks duck behind Dumpster fortresses—
pointing fingers guns bangshot spiderweb of glass
baby screaming woman wailing nonhusband slaps nonwife
nonchild shrieks the anguish of every nonentity;
Christine or Christianne’s window still glows blue.
Dawn cuts through the nightshroud,
swirling iridescence into a pool of petroleum
mirrored in facets of glass on the asphalt;
a slosh of spilled coffee mingles with rum and cola syrup oozing curbside, splattered by the kids’ sneakers as they hopscotch to school in morningdusk.
.
The streetlight moth never found the moon,
but spreads its wings and follows a finger of sunlight home.
peeling billboards blurred by smog haze;
a drunk swaggers through the last greasy drops of sunlight leaking into the gutter with booze and gasoline;
yesterday’s lottery tickets strewn among beerbottle shards,
wasted as vagrants outside the laundromat
snorting powder that could pass for soap flakes
and swigging moonshine in the lurid glow
of streetlights buzzing half-extinguished,
every door another slot in the mausoleum.
Backalley philosophers and sewer prophets
sucking on the last dregs of their joints warned all the children old enough to kick a can or syringe into the gutter:
Ain’t no miracles round here kid
and if you see something rising out of the shit and filth
don’t fool yourself it’s just the stench
even that moth buzzing in the streetlight there
knows it ain’t really the moon
you wanna dream see that fortuneteller
Christianne or Christine or Christmas whateverhernameis
behind the Dumpster there second floor
right above the convenience store apartment 2A
one with that string of blue lights in the window
she’ll map out some sort of future for you
course she’s blind in one eye
Eyes live to believe they don’t see what they see:
bottle smash siren shriek lightbulb explosion
masks duck behind Dumpster fortresses—
pointing fingers guns bangshot spiderweb of glass
baby screaming woman wailing nonhusband slaps nonwife
nonchild shrieks the anguish of every nonentity;
Christine or Christianne’s window still glows blue.
Dawn cuts through the nightshroud,
swirling iridescence into a pool of petroleum
mirrored in facets of glass on the asphalt;
a slosh of spilled coffee mingles with rum and cola syrup oozing curbside, splattered by the kids’ sneakers as they hopscotch to school in morningdusk.
.
The streetlight moth never found the moon,
but spreads its wings and follows a finger of sunlight home.
Rite of Passage
Butterfly bombshell in the making
scribbles on her hand with lipsticks in
ballerina shades of bubblegum and blush;
Dreams of iridescent eyeshade wings,
baiting boys with Chapstick-flavored sins;
lollipop lips with a grenadine flush.
Pink Nouveau, Lavender Whip, Aubergine Love
shellacked on mouths in magazines
whose glossy material seductions gush
forth penetrating, leaving stains of
Red Rush.
scribbles on her hand with lipsticks in
ballerina shades of bubblegum and blush;
Dreams of iridescent eyeshade wings,
baiting boys with Chapstick-flavored sins;
lollipop lips with a grenadine flush.
Pink Nouveau, Lavender Whip, Aubergine Love
shellacked on mouths in magazines
whose glossy material seductions gush
forth penetrating, leaving stains of
Red Rush.
Wonderland
The day dawns on streets congested with airbags. Offices are mausoleums. Tree skeletons crystallize at the banks of an aluminum river. Adults hack relentlessly at sheets of glass and plowed through drifts of Styrofoam peanuts while children in space suits rolled out of garages, molding giant after-dinner mints with plastic buckets, which they feed to abominable doughboys that stand at the curb gnashing ice-shard teeth. Life lies embalmed beneath shrouds of bubble wrap.
The neighborhood contentedly suffocates in marshmallows.
The neighborhood contentedly suffocates in marshmallows.
Lycanthra
Moon waxing full above the murk of the forest casting a bluish tinge upon clusters of bare bone branches, she finds herself in a pool of light spreading her fingers watching crimson polish crack and split as her nails lengthened into claws and felt the fangs thrust her limbs fighting the constraints of her leather jacket until she finally caved to animalic instinct and tears through them feeling her back bristle in an icy gust as she stretches towards a firmament of pitch studded with stars towards the moon whose phases commanded her own, her lips pursed instinctively into a howl that pierces the night air and rattled the surrounding trees to their foundations.
She has learned to embrace the curse.
She has learned to embrace the curse.
Red and Yellow
With the strike of a bat
the piñata rained candies
and they dove for them
greedy grubby hands
snatching the sugar away
when in the corner I found
a yellow lollipop
half-smashed by an eager shoe;
lemon or butterscotch.
When I bent to claim it
a Perfect girl with butterscotch hair
and mint-blue eyes
approached,
a red lollipop
in her clutch,
a scowl on her lips.
That’s dirty she snapped;
how she glared at me
like I was dirty blood
how she loomed above me,
tainted blood
You’re dirty, she said
to my licorice head
stranded in a lemon sea.
I ached to shatter
her red lollipop to shards
that would lodge into
her Perfect mint-blue eyes
and bleed the vanity out of them.
the piñata rained candies
and they dove for them
greedy grubby hands
snatching the sugar away
when in the corner I found
a yellow lollipop
half-smashed by an eager shoe;
lemon or butterscotch.
When I bent to claim it
a Perfect girl with butterscotch hair
and mint-blue eyes
approached,
a red lollipop
in her clutch,
a scowl on her lips.
That’s dirty she snapped;
how she glared at me
like I was dirty blood
how she loomed above me,
tainted blood
You’re dirty, she said
to my licorice head
stranded in a lemon sea.
I ached to shatter
her red lollipop to shards
that would lodge into
her Perfect mint-blue eyes
and bleed the vanity out of them.
Cassandra
Cassandra
When I’ve been shredded to confetti
fluttering in pieces to the linoleum,
my blood lures the wolves
with their straitjackets
to throw me in a cage rusting
somewhere on the west end of hell.
These reruns of my future play
in blurs and snapshots
set forever on rewind.
I am no clairvoyant;
I just see the inevitable.
Maybe this is all a hallucination
that blooms like the dandelions
rooting deep inside my skull
thriving off the cyanide.
Everything is glitter and black
In this labyrinth where I am nothing but a pinball
Flicked through plastic channels.
Tear me apart and scatter my ashes
on the vacant lot of this dream.
hurl me into oblivion;
and never hear me scream.
When I’ve been shredded to confetti
fluttering in pieces to the linoleum,
my blood lures the wolves
with their straitjackets
to throw me in a cage rusting
somewhere on the west end of hell.
These reruns of my future play
in blurs and snapshots
set forever on rewind.
I am no clairvoyant;
I just see the inevitable.
Maybe this is all a hallucination
that blooms like the dandelions
rooting deep inside my skull
thriving off the cyanide.
Everything is glitter and black
In this labyrinth where I am nothing but a pinball
Flicked through plastic channels.
Tear me apart and scatter my ashes
on the vacant lot of this dream.
hurl me into oblivion;
and never hear me scream.
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