January 30th, 2021
And Thou Shalt Judge The Expiring Soccer Mom
after Servant, Season Two, Episode Three, Pizza
Surveil from silk sheets your mortal estate.
On suburban streets, death, afterlife vie
behind grandiose gates. Above play dates,
teammates, cheese pizza parties, skeletonize
with the greatest of ease. Caretakers doze
in proximate chairs. Delicate wraith
tiptoes upstairs in prim servant’s clothes
with bowls of puréed sustenance. Your faith
remakes a cadaverous countenance,
nasal cannula dispensable soon.
Expiring soccer mom circumstances
avoidable if you only commune
with a macilent maiden magistrate.
Worthiness for rebirth, she calculates.
January 23rd, 2021
Wide Eyed
I get disheartened when an artist tells
me they’re bored. It’s especially brutal
if I’ve adored you and the art propels
my own rhetoric, research,
collections of folders some might besmirch. I think
Stanley Kubrick would have approved though I’ve
no warehouse of boxes when I’m extinct
to prove my passion for working still thrives
between poems and books. We live
amidst fascinations. If we stay spry,
wide eyed enough, work is transformative.
Suture eyes shut someday after I die
with the stories I’ve written, some I hoard.
I’ll die exhausted. I never lived bored.
January 17th, 2021
Big Teeth
Deep in the forest in a flannel nightdress,
a little girl lingers without much on
her chest, shame in her heart, much to confess.
Here she is safe, completely at rest. Gone
the behemoths of yesteryear. Her cheek
on chenille, her brain bereft of all fear
inside this night sans starlight except a meek
constellation of which faithfully appears
from a bedside nightlight replacing a moon
which made her weep more nights than swoon. Tonight
she looks no father than this light of her room
which is not a metaphor — means to write.
No beseeching big teeth inside these woods —
it ends with her pen like make believe should.
January 9th, 2021
Madonna & Manchild
Bury bereavement in cellar below
with buttercup onesie, Château Pétrus
Merlot — a godless sacrament you know
is mortal sin. Silicon reproduced
to simulate skin so your spouse can
begin, maternal virgin, again. Sleep
walk through mutual grief she countermands,
rationing love, plastic in pale hands. Keep
cries deep in your throat until she’s asleep.
A baby monitor projects its first
weep — graveled, full grown. The hell two have reaped,
one remembers alone. Insatiable thirst
nursed by propped-up bottles inside brownstone,
She suckles a doll while you drink alone.
Pretty Maids All In A Row
after Servant
Rambles past ringlets, ruffles, rouge to you,
end of the queue, interviewed for the show,
television lady forgets your debut —
segment you are someone she chose to know.
Her fascinations are fleeting and slight,
provincially dressed princess one night. Lives
she catalogues on oak shelves in plain sight.
Decades of ingenues in her archives,
December 27th, 2020
You’re At The Grownup Table Now
after Servant
In vermillion lipstick, a Dorothy
blue dress, borrowed ruby, ring finger, beaus
to impress, submit to a coy lady’s
request for your red shoes before she goes
another night to Oz, woos a tasteless
Lothario. Leave you with a boy, shrewd
serpent in a kitchen sink. First, you finesse,
send for something red to drink. Latter, you
will batter until still quivering, peel.
Boy who prepares, serves eel on a plate rues
the bell which summoned him, the man of steel
who waits to throw him out; you must stroke his rage.
At the grownup table, you will come of age.
Oh The Places You’ll Work Bitch
And Not Be Free
for Britney
For Disney, Pepsi, Bela Karolyi
(who USA gymnastics cut ties with
in pedophile controversy at the
remote training space, national forest
woods), Star Search, Broadway, Rolling Stone
(at seventeen in push-up bra, baby
blue velveteen rabbit inside her own
small town bedroom.), the 24, maybe
more, varietals of perfume; Sbarro,
Nabisco, HBO (Emmy wins for
concert docu shows), and their fathers, though,
even if estranged, legalities restore
a golden gosling to its violent cage
without telephone, medicated rage.
Continue reading “Womannotated – Oh The Places You Will Work Bitch And Not Be Free”
December 6th, 2020
Hirsute
In middle school, bullied for body hair.
Matched hair, eyes, contrasted fair skin, a shroud
I wear everywhere. Was so scared
to shave above the knee. Was told no one
should look there anyway. Was whispered of
so many days in locker rooms by some
with blonde peach fuzz which was what love
looked like, at this time, to me, Florida
yellow/tan uniformity. Was called
a fiend, witch from another place, not of
the beach I breach, a plaited pouting pall
their boyfriends chased, animal they want to taste,
shadow to hide inside this golden place.
November 29th, 2020
The Dirty Truth About Butterflies
It’s easy for a religiously bred
(misled) girl to make an Eden of
a garden, angels of winged soon dead,
repopulating in three weeks. But love’s
amino acids butterflies won’t find
in agapanthus nectar, waterfalls —
Continue reading “Womannotated – The Dirty Truth About Butterflies”
November 21st, 2020
Radiant Heat
This is the time of day sunbeams cross my
mattress, imprison flesh atop its breadth.
Each breath, bee balm, bids eyelash butterflies
vibrate; no body lies in wait bereft
its pleasures just because it is alone
but moans all illuminations shone through nude
windows. Your radiant heat upon bones,
Continue reading “Womannotated – Radiant Heat”
November 14th, 2020
Macabre Burlesque
I live in a genre the aged read.
Decrepit men tell their mendacities
before a final tomcatnap beneath
cracked granite mausoleum roof. This squeezed
social register, not quite weatherproof,
trickles on nipples; a drooping sundress
exposes flesh, rose, only ghosts reprove
or molest, witness this macabre burlesque.
BURNING HOUSE PRESS 