She knew she was stronger.
Although the thought felt like the hook of a top 40 hit, remixed into oblivion, written by a gay man. But, she was stronger.
The fall leaves outside her office window were a confusion, the yellow to brown of the dying leaves, in peripherals, looked like hopeful sunlight off of that red brick of the new condos across the street. She mistook the occasional squirrel scampering across the tree’s branches as a person. The person attempting to push through Play-Doh innards out into the fall air, expecting indian summer - finding November’s unflossed teeth.
Meanwhile, her mobile device became a Twitter feed of a stragler, a desperate mouth-breather with low self esteem. Hardly an aquantence, the dependency of messages limited by 50 characters began to stitch a patchwork of holiday celebration, alcohol and crippiling censorship which had ravaged this distant person’s psyche for 3 life-stages on two American coasts. Eventually, after the result of years of constriction, led to the purchase of not one, but two cats.
Closing her purse, our heroine turned to look out the window once more, trying her hardest to ignore the Play-Doh on her new blouse.

The rush of life-giving, possibly life-creating, fluid brought tears to his eyes. As the trees outside became dormant the seeds inside Joseph began to push through the loose top soil, reach toward the heat of blood, light of the untouched, water of the future …

Jospeh put his pen down. He continued to cry, but for a different reason

MexicanWabash
aMexicanWarwithOld
FussandFeathers.
I am smelling my hand as I smelled
leather in colder weather.
A ranch hand or woodsman perhaps
only in the sense that I modled
in the Fall 2006 J. Crew
cataloge.
The pipes of this mansion churn
as ghosts, whistling miner songs,
humming stockyard hymns, cracking
iron to steel in rhythm, in warmth
of workboots.

Soccer is always on the T.V.
Avacodo always on my breath

OHH! The places! The places you’ve seen! Resting
on a right angle, baking in twelve hour
old sunlight, unseen by most (minus
flies) you stare straight into
cottony sky. There, around your mid-section, traces
of a heel print, a sudden stop. Further down
the Avenue your entrails strewn
in straight skids of disgusted frustration. Once, twice.
Two tries to cleanse the sole. To most you
are even outside of peripheral vision. Your revenge: silently
cling to tread, gnaw at rubber in hopes
of striking flesh. Now, OHH now? You lay as a hypothetical
nearly Antebellum home, with no carpenters, no
Lincolns, but OOHHH! The places. The places
you’ve been!

Jilted, confounded, the city
retched at the scent
of it’s own late afternoon infertility. The
city trembled with self-loathing, moist
to confess the betrayal
It now felt.

As the asphalt perspired an ice cream
truck and ambulance both
chime their warnings. So perverse the melody an
infant creaks a croaking protest. Unfortunately the petition
is drowned by the city’s cat-like heat in an
otherwise mild summer.

The origin of humanity evaporated from my left earlobe, my last
proper piece
of natural equipment. I felt bonded to steel - promised to urban arms, a betrothed
bride without knowledge of her hope
chest’s location (and/or) a pre-pancreatic surgery boy, passing
time twisting a Rubix cube - amazed
to find the cube’s side facing him to be
all
green.
The tiny doughy hands rotate the cube to view
the other sides, sure of triumph! Disbelieving
the boy continues to spin the cube around
and around,
gathering speed, heat before finally, sweaty, desperate, the toy slips
from his grasp, loudly tumbling
on linoleum, embarrassingly revealing
5 non-uniform sides.

The boy, the bride slink into wedding
dress bedsheets, their strangeness
a comforting cool stroke - a mother’s steady hand, armed with washcloth
on fevered prepubescent brow. Face
down in shame, burrowing for comfort
as well as to dissipate frustrated energy
bleach climbs upward, hell-bent to be heaven
bound (or at least more original en route) cleaning sins from deceptively old
instruments of sleep (as well as other horizontal activities). Bleach
to chlorine. Chlorine
continues, peruses. Jilted,
confounded the city releases.
Bleach to
chlorine, face
down inhaling.

We are beasts, bundled with the fruit of steel, the collections
of ill-begotten, flint fisted plunder. Dirt and skin, prisoners
under half moon fibers - digits of both
northward
and
southward varieties.
Southwest of my current location
an Appache horse sleeps.

There is a fireball in my stomach anxious to somersault across
icy roads, itching to liberate the stockyards kitty-corner
to the glue factory, adhere to the
principles of her forefathers, and work on
a sexy ass, so when bikini season
arrives, so will she.

Sleeves too short, another
forgotten passage written in
half-sleep, talking through
athletic plastic, flexing
arthritic ghosts residing
in thin jaw muscles, names
of which are lost in grocery
store encyclopedias, sticky
with strawberry jam, generic,
deposited by curious fingers
of coloring book children.

Wax. Cold. How long can
we (we being the human race,
or if too large a perspective
let’s keep it between us: narrator
and reader) recycle? How long
can we watch the evening news
with straight faces and un-
blinking eyes?

Yesterday I sat in a room
with people. We all
had clothes. We
all had a name. We
all had a chair (none of us
would sit on the floor!). We
brainstormed the cliches
we could stencil on the
cinder block walls.