This is how . . . to read a pöem
with plenty of pregnant . . . pauses about to break . . .
water. Make them feel . . . your labor pains.
Let them know you suffer . . . to give birth . . .
to art . . . fart . . . Blow the world apart!
Category: Poetry
Revision
I eat paper like popcorn
page after crumbled page
looking for that tasty kernel
a little burnt with extra butter
but my fingers are greasy
and the idea slips from me.
Unamused
A dog under your table
you scratch and forget,
cross legs through angled shadows
pressing me back into the darkness.
Waiting for corner to fall,
I trace the wood grain,
smell the feast above me
and dream of broken wine.
I long for your lean fingers,
the wrinkles and whorls,
the grease under your red nails,
a bit of slippery fat dropped.
Kept by hunger, I search
the linoleum for patterns.
Taxidermy
say something say something
cram my mouth with crumpled words
stuff my chest cavity with paper
anything to fill me up give me shape
ever since I pulled the gods
from my belly my hide’s begun to sag
say something say something
any answer as long as it is broad
enough to fill the gap between stars
strong enough to bridge the space
between a nucleus and electron
an open question is the mouth of death
any answer to stop the asking
A Poem Dangerously about Itself
word
Isn’t “word” a weird word,
something blind and burrowing?
Where’s it going? Why so blunt?
What’s it looking for? Itself?
These shapes, these sounds, how
do they mean what I mean
them to mean? I mean
this group of words does
not make meaning nor a poem, yet
if I could turn these lines
against themselves, this line would be
invalidated and oh so very. What?
Full of itself, full of its emptiness?
Either way, it’s not a good beginning
for a poem, a poem meant, as I am,
to express itself. The poem totters on a single
that seems to mean and misses itself,
as I miss you, meaning, I miss myself,
meaning, I miss the point of wanting to express
myself, beginning and ending, as I do, upon a
word.