A Yellow Tulip

With weary grace
you lean,
green, like
the dying sigh of spring,
over the bottle's glass lip.
Three long leaves enfold your slender stem:
two, the dainty swell of rabbit's ears,
lightly creased from root to tip,
one, a flat, exhausted tongue of
rubber husk,
tasting the tabletop.
Your hollow yellow blossom
thin, like finespun silk, but
crisp as dewy cabbage
tilts its wide mouth earthward as though
huffing out its candle.

Am I in Trouble?

She bends,
knobby knees splayed,
to pull Tinker Bell boots
from a locker
twice her size.
The school halls spread,
cavernous, and
pigtails with pink ties graze
soft young cheeks
that tilt up toward a teacher's voice.
“What are you doing
in here
by yourself?”
the old man asks,
and her hummingbird heart
flutters, Am I
in trouble?
“They said I
need my boots to
go out
on the playground.”
He shuffles up behind her,
beer gut pushing
into her back,
and his fat pale hands creep
over her shoulders,
down her flat chest and stop
to cradle her unripe privates.
His hot breath
moistens her ear
as he bends
to whisper
threatening gibberish.
She stands, blank-faced,
as he walks away,
and her hummingbird heart
trips

Shuck and Swallow

Men with tie-dyed sweat stains shove
barnacled shells across a grill
crusted black
with God-knows-what.
“The Virtue of Shellfishness,”
a banner reads.
Tyler and I navigate
streets sprinkled
with long-haired hobos
and glistening tourists
to the hiss of saltwater steam
and the incense of seaweed and weed.
We seek
the perfect oyster.

Butter-and-bacon,
blackberry sake,
Po Boys, skewers,
all of them fresh;
an oyster mosaic
streams through the square.
Tyler buys two big slimy
treats,
slathered with garlic and
garnished with gills.
The brown shell scrapes my upturned palm
but cradles its tenant in pearl.

I thumb the gob of flesh
into my throat,
butter and brine dribbling.
Seawater fills my mouth and I
gag, not daring to touch this
gritty nugget with my tongue.
Tyler laughs
and buys another.

Waiting... Waiting...

I am waiting for a certain someone
To pomegranate slice me open
And discover a hundred thousand luminescent
Seeds of passion,
Nesting in fibers of faith.

Sometime Later

Someday I will burst into crystalized comet magma,
Tinkling and shattering over our blanket of a galaxy,
And there will be nothing left to speak of me but the
Quiet unease
Of one certain boy.

Black Widow

Should I ever let you go
It will be as a lightning-winged firefly
Released from the spider’s web
Tugging and flitting until
In a moment of marvel
The silver threads, my heartstrings woven
Stretch
And
Stretch
And

Snap

Tangled and broken,
A tattered tapestry,
Stretched too thin to give pursuit.

I never knew I was a widow
A Black Widow
I thought that I was weaving you a home
A home of filamentous fantasies and
Glistening threads of passion

I wasn’t going to bleed you

I wasn’t going to bleed you

I wasn’t going to need you

I’d woven you a dream

But all you want
Were meant to want
You only want
To shine your little light
As you echo back the stars
Among the million fireflies
To fly

To fly

And die.

Moment of Perfection

The spotlight of the cheddar moon
Reveals a path of wonder
Along the salt-bleached skipping stones
And sandy mattress under.

Eliot is in my ears
Echoing his verse
Of white-blown waves and mermaid song,
Of universe and curse.

The skeletons of driftwood beasts
Form jungle-gyms of white,
The moon-bleached bones of ancient trees
Are dragons made of light.

Poseidon roars and claws the shore,
His whitecaps snatch for life,
The gravity of Artemis
Enchanting him to strife.

I do not fear, I step in awe
And from perfection there I draw
The mystery of love and law
Within the poetry that I saw.