lady friends

thirty something
intuiting seventy
stoop talks
lemonade
cheap cheese
and bread dipped in
decaf coffee
(because afternoons and caffeine
make for drunken hags)...

lizabeta shifts her girdle
sitting
laughing
she stops
thinks
and starts again
something bigger
than her
makes a dent in her
stomach
breathe, breathe, breathe
like a bird
cleaned after an oil spill

nessa rubs
her wrist
a habit altered from childhood
at twenty
she rung her feet
until anxiety gave
way to rum,
diet coke
pizza fills
midget men
and biting
dogs

saruiz
makes fake sugar
out of salt
pouring duration
into dirty glasses
nessa is blind
lizabeta
lost smell
for sex
and
she who
mixes
gives way to
self in favor
of him, him, him
only to see
kitty cats
in winter muffs

necessity (for radio voice)

without the timely
split,
methodically executed,
for the trail
a trailing off even
beat, beat, beat
a bat in his cave
you'd give
everything--
years
worked
into secrets.

in the stolen offer
tardy, tired, trained
like kafka's hungry artist
made panther
now a cage
no moist walls
or womb pockets
you make a fool out of a second too long
switching a sound and
a sound
into musical interlude

this is your virtue
a necessity
to bring cock
to a screen
absent
not fickle
visible
but
not yet tuned.