The Timing of Intimacy

The clock towers above the city, her
Moon face freckled by Roman numeral
Red and bruised gears churn inside like          anxiety
And drop tremors her steeple, dress for a funeral.

Speaking of trees, sweet amber caroline
is in a bottle of whiskey
rolling inside a purple suitcase, with his sinister buddies
and burping over multi-coloured cobblestones, that no horses walk on.
For today is Sunday;
The sun makes a prism out of everything
and you smile and the winter landscape smiles back at you (pl.)
flecks of white light reflected on your face like snowflakes
Black fleece cover linked arms and wind, love, musses your (pl.) hair.

 The clock towers above the city, her
Moon face freckled by Roman numeral
Red and bruised gears churn inside like          anxiety
And drop tremors her steeple, dress for a funeral.

Otherwise, there are no fish in the river,
The fishermen are at home with their slimy wives
whose bellies they slit open and rub grains of salt into the fishy flesh.
Mother collapses,
like the chickens raised for food on factory farms
mammoth bodies fold in on slender limbs.
Smells of straw and decomposing muscle tissue
Lethal squawking racks the rafters.
Father Christmas and his nine ghoul dancers
squirt through the skies and sit in the shadowy parts of the room
while your family traditions unfurl like a flag
and sitting cross- legged in your pajamas on the floor
you can only see His eyes
and their tiny, shiny, bloodstained hooves.

The clock towers above the city, her
Moon face freckled by Roman numeral
Red and bruised gears churn inside like          anxiety
And drop tremors her steeple, dress for a funeral.

3 Poems

College

They come from home: swamps, sewers, and airlifts
Dragging with them their stench, mothers, and premature behavior.
“Class of 2012!” all pumped up.
What a great “New Ivy League” school
You should be proud to be here
Clearly you tried your hardest
And deserve a real. college. experience.
Close your eyes and breathe it in now.
Fill your fucking faces.
Turn on the showers and wash the shit out of your hair
And watch it float across the floors and down the drain.
Welcome to your personal institution-
Oh pardon me, I mean-
We accept your differences,
(actual intelligence doesn’t really count)
Natural selection doesn’t exist here.

 And gyrate your way to the quad!
Mod! Blod! Sod!
You’re in the Real World, guys!
So hip and horny,
Silent sodomy ailed by urine-barley-brew
The old Grecians whose letters we use
would be ashamed to their gods if they knew

 And mamas look me in the eye
On orientation day so divine
Searching for that kid (the one I’m not), the perfect example
They’re paying 50K for their own to be.
 
Well you’re getting ripped off, mom,
And you don’t care
‘cause everyone deserves their own taste of Princeton.

Sluttery

a rose is a rose,
to a hand is a hand
to a face to a kiss
to asleep beneath trees
with the fluid sliding, manic meaning
sounds like hydraulics and wind up doll
hey. hey there.
because the embrace is such a surprise
every. goddamn. time.
and my smile isn’t fake it’s just
an imitation of yours
and it’s not that I don’t feel, my dear
or cannot see you warm my hands with yours
but once everything starts, like clockwork, to fly
and alarms become redundant to the ears
and it takes so much more to wake up in the morning than a
             fall out of bed
             a beating to the head
             poisoning with lead
as I walk with you,    and he
and she
and he
and all, in good timing, are
alone with me.

 

After the Frat Party

He plunders, face drenched in ale
And over his shoulder he swings the girl
And carries her whooping victory cries
Her blood streaming down his back
With the rain, all the way up the hill
to Susan B. Anthony 
And in his drunken delight
That impromptu wedding night
Strewn between textbooks and roommates’ fright
He hears cheering from outside the window (thanks bros!)
And she, too delirious and panting and silent
Does not remember how quickly he came. 

Waiting

“You can put those right down here.” drawled Candy, the short waitress with old limp, orange-bleached hair and tired eyes. I heaved and dropped the rack of plastic glasses on the brick floor.

            “But they were clean.”

            “Yeah that’s where we put em.” Candy spat. Her eyebrows looked like they were constantly raised and her angular mouth made her default expression one that seemed to always say “What the hell are you looking at?”

            “CORNER!” a brassy voice called and stumbled over my bent-over figure. A clatter as the dishes from her bronzed, cucumber-melon-scented hands fell to the floor. “Now look what you’ve made me do!” Alysha was fuming.

            “I’m so sorry.” I muttered, grabbing onto the expo table to get up. Her green eyes blaze out from under her thin, furrowed, black brows. “I’ll take care of it, I—”

            “No, I got it, new girl.” Alysha pshawed. “Just don’t be bendin’ over all over the place, you might get bumped.”

            I blushed and disappeared into the back of the kitchen. I had 49 silverware to roll before I could go out and wait tables. I moaned and flattened out several napkins to continue rolling.

            “Sucks doesn’t it.”

            I turned, startled to see Candy leaning up against the shelf behind me. “It’s okay, I guess.”

            “Just wait until after the second week. You’re gonna want to get out of here like a bat out of hell.” Candy drawled. A cigarette hung from between her pouty lips.

Waiting

            “Beatrice?” I turned around to see a slouched man of average height with a droopy salt and pepper mustache and a tucked-in, short-sleeved Hawaiian shirt smiling politely at me. Quickly grabbing my purse, I fixed my top and got off the barstool to greet him. “Nice to meet you, I’m Gary, the hiring manager here.” I hate Hawaiian shirts, they remind me of my dorky choral teacher in high school. He breathed heavily from behind his mustache as he held out a hand for me to shake. Gross.

            “Hi, nice to finally meet you after all the emails.” I said pulling my widest musical-theatre smile. His eyes warmed up- it worked.

            “Now why don’t we have a seat here and I’d like to have you answer some questions for me, is that alright?” he asked, pulling out a seat at one of the red-and-white striped tables behind him.

            As I sat down, my head gently hit the old fashioned lamp that hung low above us. “Sorry.”

            “It’s fine, it happens all the time.” he said, taking a seat across the table. He haphazardly arranged some papers in front of him on a clipboard. “So tell me in a couple words why you want to work with us here at Smokey Joe’s.”

            Brilliant, essay question time. I bluffed something about costumer service and interaction with a diverse group of people. Basically as close to “I’ve wanted to be a waitress at this shitty restaurant since I was a child.” as I could get without sounding fake. Of course I was just taking this as a summer job. Of course I was going to quit in a couple months. I just don’t have to let them know.