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.

rambling bocce (f)alls (for v.)

it feels like only last night
that evelyn left us in a room
to fend for ourselves.
you: silent, weird, clever, brave
me: loud, sassy, intense, cowardly

i initiated our escape with the gargoyles
you lead the way
compass tied to your belt
yet you never looked down
i snapped at college boys trying
to sneak a peak
into perspective kids' panties
you laughed at my
outbursts
"silly ass"--you must have thought
as you helped me believe
you followed

as we walked to the point
or maybe the bookstore
or maybe the med
or maybe, just maybe a bench to properly complain

i dug a hole in evelyn's life
the rainy weather
the frat party i would protest
the university's dorm policies
the white boy(s) staring at us

you--like a sweet pill for my demon
threw some dirt in those holes
tiny splatters
just enough to let me know
know
know
that you knew
silence
was the only way
to quiet
a bomb.

obsessió

every thing that needed to be said
spoke in six hours
like a knight that
couldn't end
and a queen that could be had
until time
gave way to
distance and
questions
were too answered

repeat. repeat
after me
everything that needed to be had
was given in
six hours
like a boy
who couldn't offer
and a mother who couldn't bare
until space
became an abyss
and answers
floated into
air

juice box

if we were friends at age seven
we'd sit on a stoop
our fingers laced
i'd be pigeon toed
your heels would touch
we'd name stars
and make faces
with the clouds

i'd say: can the stars hear us?
you'd say: if we scream loud enough?!

in our bubble
we'd hear
our echoes
and giggle

you'd say: can the clouds see us?
i'd say: only if we close our eyes

we'd turn blindly to the sky
then to one another
shrink
our chins
and through
our reddened
faces
we'd be friends

rubberband

real pearls
flat against my chest
red lips
pursed against
your absent
mouth

and painted
nails
holding
a rubberband
you buried
in-between
my index fingers

slowly i pull
it into the
edges of
space

snap!
my fingers
lose you

why did you
close the casket
when i was still
breathing?

why did i wear
my best party
dress to a
life gone deadly wrong?

pickled apples (for f.)

there's death in your left eye
that not even its companion
can make right

it hangs low
it drags into the past
it's scratched
sometimes yellow
often red
more than brown

your brow dips
often dives
and it closes
leaving everything wrong
in the open

a stye makes
your elongated eyelashes
curl and clump
lathered with
the weight of brilliance
a fear of the body
a helpless want for intimacy
that only that dying eye
can scream

but even in infection
in all that is ugly
there is failed beauty
there is that eye
struggling
it lifts, extends
speaks
a word
and becomes again