A Poem

this poem is supposed to be in very long lines...but the formatting didn't take to it well.

I: 2

This valley also lends itself
to the sort of performance
the girls would put on in the tall cedar theatre
just behind their closet doors. Or
in winter time the plays lit up against
the kitchen wall, some parts lost against
the window dull from frost and bittered branches.
Solemn they hanged their heads shrouded
in veils and tasseled dish cloth, being
the crying women in desert processionals
flailing their skinny arms and elbows toward
the ceiling and windows and slinking
their covered hip bones in secret rhythmic circles.

Look how she crumples her fingers
to make deers with antlers she says move slowly
in their grasses and take careful steps
through parts with snow. We watch the other
covered in a sheet hunched like a hungry mule
across a desert with small knees and paper
hooves. We close our eyes to commission
the sounds of the other scene performed
behind a door closed upstairs, a chorus of falling
glass, shards against the hard wood
are the rains the smaller one prayed for
on the fourth and driest night when the sand filled
her lungs and her sister made the sound
of the mule’s dry throat from under the table.
with their knees on the tile, they stretch
their shoulders to feel their mirage happen
in their sweaty palms and move their cheeks
closer to the scented water. The painted paper
shudders as her thirsty beast bends to drink from
the water on the floor.Know that they do this in silence.
That their silence mutters the divisive orchestra
they have disowned. That sometimes
they are those sulky wandering queens in a kingdom of rock.

Dead Pigeons on 51st and Other Violent Moments

Firstly:

Dear Jack Morgan,

I am sorry to disappoint. I know I said I would write many nights ago and I did not. My inaction is explainable for thousands of resaons.

And then:

Dear Everybody,

After work the other day, the beautiful Kim Miller and I went to a poetry reading at the world famous KGB Bar. The thing was weird start to finish. The room felt deader than the Romanovs when we got there only two or three minutes early. After long moments of fidgeting and smiling uncomfortably, a puckered face, 55+ crowd hobbled in, changing the ambiance from post-Blitzkrieg Guernica to St. Petersburg-members only-bridge club. The reading was hosted by "Behind the Book", a non-profit that does pretty much exactly what 826 Valencia does but not nearly as well. The night included narrative poems translated from French about a man who desired deeply to be the world's most premium serial killer but was left in a state of misery when he found himself unable to slice the face off a woman he believed to be a prostitue AND a woman reading poems "inspired by" poems written by women in state prisons...which really means "stolen from"... generally about bludgeoning, bashing, shooting in the face, or heating up one end of a coat hanger and carving off a nose, lip, or eyebrow. The most violent moment was delivered by the president of "Behind the Book" herself whose dislike of the poets she had invited became apparent when she exclaimed to her partner that they were all "cunt bitches" whom she "fucking hate[ed]". We couldn't take it anymore. Needing to escape as soon as humanly possible, we lunged at the door, only to find that we had been locked inside. Forever. The whole crowd turned their heads and watched in silence as the bartender tromped slowly toward us with a ring of 100 keys, only one of which would lead us to freedom. We ran with our eyes closed all the way down the stairs, out the door, and well past the end of the block.

The next morning I watched a woman place her high heel into the carcass of a pigeon splayed into the concrete in front of the CitiBank building.








Come Sunday, all I needed was to spend some time far away from Manhattan, and from blood, and from thewholegoddamncityandeverythinginit.

So we got in a car and drove to a farm.

(To Follow)