1 New Poem

Summer Skin

When I slipped out of
old clothes for the new century,
the tired rags coming off
in great display,

I took the last half of it laughing,
luminous against backdrops of
half-filled water glasses sitting on
kitchen counters, sticky atop Formica,
sweating in lakeside heat.

I was the imaginary boy, a
boundless whirring of pregnant possibility;
all chanting in soft voice how
great the wings would grow
despite their bent angles.

Until I dropped robes of old time,
the light box of arcade plastic
and screen reflection dulling me,

As I take timepieces, calendars,
silver dollars, baby spoons,

All down to a penny pawn shop,

Sold for good firewood.

1 New Poem

Pine Tinder

In the stolen wonderland
of interlocked train cars, crisscross
traffic between stowaway kisses
off concrete paths,

We burn bright,
white phosphorus and corner store whiskey,
in ragged-end dress and worn elbow coat.

We are wonderous against a thousand
microphones held searching
for explanation, for the why/how
of it all.

We brush past,
unbothered in the acid glow,
cast by bent street lamps,
cast by quarter-shade phones boxes
with copper and change
long since stripped.

Until we round corners,
catch faces against motor oil pools
in blear-eyed dawn light;

How weary, how extinguished,
how like the spectacles-and-watch crowd,
we look in afterparty haze.