In the Reference Library

In the Reference Library

Hushed
we pass notes between one another,
touching.

Each time,
our hands meet like the beginning,
a genesis of electricity.

I ask you in ballpoint,
“Coffee?”
You score through my hand,
scribble something,
slide the scrap
back to me.

Smiling shyly,
I wait for your eyes to catch mine.
You nod,

I unravel
the paper in my fingertips.
“Secret balcony,” it says.

We pack up our belongings,
a muffle of notebooks and nerves,
and I follow you.


---------------
In the Reference Library, first in DUO collaboration project with Lucy Roscoe, of Edinburgh College of Art, 2009. (art by Lucy Roscoe)

Frog Dream

Frog Dream

In my dream, as you promised,
We are hunting frogspawn

I am surreptitious in a lake,
With one lip above,
And one below,
The horizon of the water

It's very still,
And I know nothing about frogspawn
But imagine they do not breed in water
Deep enough for me to be half-lip in.

I imagine it is a swarm of eggs,
Murky like your sky
(Not orange like Japanese ikura
Which I think are delicious.)

In my dream, lip-deep,
I brave my face into the puddle of eggs,
Stare so closely into some of them
That we are eye to eye

I can see tails,
Little pod-bodies, all head.
My lips unveil,
Capturing one slick egg—

Mouthing over it
-No, it is not ikura at all-
Holding the thing on the tip of my tongue
Up to the sunlight

In my dream I watch it, and I shine through
Because in dreams you can be in two places at once.
I can see your puddock, on my tongue,
A real live frog.


---------------
Frog Dream, first in Gloom Cupboard, #75, 01/15/09

Sleep

Sleep

In the mellow argot of our pillow talk,
my sloe eyes destory you. You feed me
a pabulum of day-stuffs, recount our walk—
the bit of blue ribbon we saw, matte in the gutter
near our flat, and the magpies, enough for a secret
never told, telling it to the passersby
who do not speak magpie, unfortunately.

I remind you of the cloy of hops and malt
which fills our part of the city, especially at midday—
a smell you can no longer smell,
as one cannot smell the aroma of his own home
but knows it.

Our report dissolves into echolalia:
"You were a poet hemming pantlegs," you say,
a spume of snore, I say, "hemming pantlegs."


---------------
Sleep, first in Tontine, STUDENT Newspaper's creative writing supplement,Week 9, 11/19/08

Pigeons

Pigeons

There are pigeons everywhere.

Pigeons on the stoop, doing the Egyptian.
Pigeons in groups, in rain troughs, bathing.
Pigeons who own the place & know it.
Know that this is the ledge of the window
On which the previous tenant has written "Do not Open, Broken".
Pigeons who sit there, and stare, as I write pigeon poems:

      City Doves, punk Rock Pigeons,
     Shit on the heads of great dead men
     Immortalized in stone.

Pigeons in the courtyard, pigeons in the square,
Pigeons in swarms, taking aim in mid-air.
Pigeons who could not care less whether
I am trying to get somewhere
In a hurry,
And go on bobbing and weaving,
Puffing their neck feathers and cooing,
And making romantic advances
At inviting lady pigeons,
Taking up the whole damn sidewalk.


---------------
Pigeons, first in Tontine, STUDENT Newspaper's creative writing supplement,Week 7, 11/04/08
Also for DUO collaboration project with Lucy Roscoe, of Edinburgh College of Art, 2009. (art by Lucy Roscoe)

Aiko, Do You Love Me?

Aiko, Do You Love Me?

After 30 years of grooming
She still cannot say "strawberry"
(Strawvelly)

She is like an orchid in bloom
In how they do not blossom,
But grow slowly into themselves
Quiet -then sudden- and stay.

On our walks:
"Aiko, do you love me?"
She does not wait for answer—
"Look at that one! Good pink color. Magnolia tree:
It is in my garden at home.”

With plants, she sings English.
She grows the things, a careful scientist.
All prune and feed. Guess and test.

I water the orchid I bought.
“It will grow best outside, Aiko.
Orchid likes the wind."
The pot moss is moldy, white with fuzz.
I water it anyhow. My hands are not her hands.

I murdered the shame plant.
Mimosa. She calls it in Japanese, "Ojigiso".
I touched it and prodded it
To watch it bow its head and rise again,
My tiny minion.
Until one day it simply did not move.

So I have only this orchid, here,
And my memory of her science—
Naming them, my Adam of botany.


---------------
Aiko, Do You Love Me?, first in Read This Magazine, #12, 11/2008

Attack

Attack

Focus center:
You, knelt, sitting on your feet,
Winning all the single-player time-trials
To unlock karts and question marks.

Pan left:
Me, seated at the laptop,
Clattering.

You head for the kitchen.
Pan right, pan further right
You start the kettle for two teas.
It is our second night here.

Pull back.
Tilt and follow spotlight to target.
Launch egg through 6-inch opening in kitchen window.

You shout from the kitchen, “Someone has thrown an egg through our window!”
You apologize for Scotland.
We grab towels and console one another.
We love our house. It is ruined.


Camera has long-since stopped tape.

It does not follow us, mopping goop off our ceiling
Before it sets or stains. Before it reeks of sulfur.
It does not see underneath the fridge where I reach precariously
To swab up puddles of smell
All Saturday evening.


---------------
Attack, first in Read This Magazine, online 10/2008

Umi-Uma

海馬 (Seahorse)

your feathered head
is a brilliant mane
[despite what you say.]

fragile elegance
intricate skin
i eye-trace the curlicued
chest of you.

no teeth.
no stomach either.
you suck prey in.
you cock your head,
and suck.

i watch your colors change,
as you bow— 色々な色

to hold you
is to shatter glass,
to loose self (bleed)(ablate)
for tampering with
untouchables.

i am behind a pane.

your lover lays her perfect eggs down before you
and you take them, tuck them inside of you.
you bear the birth—

you, bucking bronco of it—
fight through the water,
with a hummingbird fin.

and when you have finished,
i will enjoy you,
laughing with shoulders
hunched over, above the stones.

at last, you wrap your tail around me.
& i eat you for your sex.


---------------
Umi-Uma (Seahorse), first in The Drum Magazine, Miyagi, Japan 2007
Also for DUO collaboration project with Lucy Roscoe, of Edinburgh College of Art, 2009. (art by Lucy Roscoe)