Dead Uncle Dick

I only met the Queen once or twice,

but he was surely unforgettable:

I see him lurch,
a third parent, shaking the dust

in the attic at my grandpa’s house.

Perhaps he wears a boa,

shrugged around his polyester shoulders,

box-stepping to Marvin Gaye,

with a frail martini glass dangling

between bloated fingers.

Nana, arms in stoic akimbo,

always stood ten stairs away

her nagging like leather restraints

carving marks into his wrists.

She left her mark,

so did he.

A mark like an iridescent stain
on young Uncle Eric,
who used a fly swatter to beat

pillows saturated with Saturday ash

over the chipped porch rail

after one two many

of Uncle Dick’s parties.

Mom remembers

using a plastic stick,

steadfast pink flamingo at the top,

to mix his fuzzy navels.

Taste buds conditioned

to savor orange and peach: flavors

that carried his color.

I keep a pile of his faux fur

and plastic gifts,

given before I was able to keep track
of the important moments.

Looking at them, I can’t see

the morphine drip

from sterile sack to veins

like a chardonnay bottle, tilted

above the Nepalese heirloom rug

in Nana’s sitting room:

Each drop poisons

what was once carelessly perfect.

Jellybeans

Somebody put ten rainbow jellybeans

in those red Mary Janes from Chinatown,

like sticky confetti clogged

in gold embroidered, silk balloons.

Ten toes squished kaleidoscopic mush.

John didn’t talk to me at the party.

He was still mad enough to scoot

pouty centimeters, sitting

on the same flaccid couch.

Before I left I found ten rainbow jellybeans

in those red Mary Janes from Chinatown

where I left them, under the coffee table,

Like capsule-sized reminders of sweetness

squashed because

I didn’t pay attention.

Iron Skillet

For Molly Peacock

Inky hair drapes

around her lyric machine

like a chunky kitchen rag

concealing a crux:

what is the most important thing?

Tipping a ticking head

she sucks in nine million words.

Ringlet rolls of syntax

smoke: curl and compress.

Words in her tongue veins,

like gooey yolk

seep from buds into batter,

and a mind-spoon stirs

the sifted flour and blueberries.

With vigorous ease she flips

little iambic pancakes

on an iron skillet.

Where do I get mine?

 A Summer in Boston

House on Reed Street, like a tattered button

tin packed with bike parts and three rapidly

aging boys: more upstairs, some stuffed dozen.

I dressed in a closet, smoked through crumbly

plaster cracks. But out of the atrophy

of walls too thin sprawls a stretching nexus,

a key strand to a braided rope city

that tangled me close till I felt deathless.

Jamaica Plain, the Commons, left peony

bulbs beveling in my pedestrian

sight, their augmented Back Bay blooms boldly

sank in my soft brain, unoccupied cushion.

From all corners Boston’s groping ribbons

Wrapped around my head like floral curtains.

Stephen’s Keys

Under haggard stairs a door opens without keys

Crinkled sheets and puckered cases around the placid piano

Like a drooping neocortex, crowded with too many wrinkles,

Too many thoughts at once. When it’s time to hush

Dad drags gaunt fingers through a lawn of unkempt hair.

Silence between cups of coffee, thinking, he crosses his knees.

Morning sun slaps his Danish skin red, from cheeks to knees.

NPR sounds squirm from a silver box and dad looks for his keys.

Considering a song for class while shaving spiny hairs

From a dapper chin, he forgets a chord and steps back to the piano.

Students strain to catch his blue notes like droplets: splash. They hush,

Feeling each vibration wobble and rest in the plush tissue of wrinkled

Lungs. What is reserved between his wrinkles?

Outwardly, he lives in his mom’s skyscraper body, equipped with snapping knees.

She gave him blood tainted, whiskey brimming sights and he hushed.

Each consumed capsule and cigarette grappled and caged with a key;

Boyhood bound and suspended by the taut strings of a piano.

Music birthed relief, spreading from the pit of his gut to the ends of his hairs.

Obstructing the screaming, Merle Haggard’s voice hushed

Dad down. Loretta Lynn reached through the radio to caress his hair. 

Sound sleep came by dreams of Lennon’s fingers on keys.

New fervor unearthed through the grooves between Al Green’s wrinkles.

Hiding from clashing shields of kin, he put his face between knees

And between squeezed lids saw glimpses of his first piano.

Dad left Idaho for Boston, Boston for the Midwest, grass and gravel in his hair.

He harmonized with the engine and rhymed with the wrinkles

In the leather steering wheel, looking for somewhere to put his piano.

Chancing Chicago, he learned to sing. Guitar propped on knee,

Shouting at recollection with perfect intonation. Losing his car keys,

He decided to stay. The city brought stillness, made his mind hush.

Tonight pink and blue lights splatter him speckled, at the piano.

Bubbles of sound expand and explode, floating over one hundred hushed

Mouths. A fanfare of lyrics march on, making the stiffest knees

Chatter, like sweaty palms and chewed nails and hairs

Standing skyward. He smiles, exposing new wrinkles.

Fingers dance like the Bolshoi across a floor littered with keys.

Leaving the bar, dad reaches for his keys. Lingering notes sew, with hair-thin

Stitches, between the delicate wrinkles in his brain. Home, at his piano,

Rubbing tired knees, he breathes a limp “hush,” inwards.

Licorice puddles fluidly stack
filling the vile:
ball on point.


Crunched upwards, 
Twitches from my forefinger
And thumb,
Like bent toothpicks
Connected by limbic wires
To vague shapes morphing,
In a hesitant brain.


Like a pulsing marionette
Equipped with circulating strings,
make a puppet of the pen.

Mattress

Latticed fleece beneath
A hilly range of synthetic fibers
Motionlessly compressed
Within pileous pyramids of
Limp duvets
Stack on my face

Like an old man’s beard,

Indecently shaggy.

Permanently horizontal,

I endure an imperfect life.

Ponds of saliva sink,

Snuggled in my intimate surface.

These moist depressions turn yellow

Like piss colored, pussing scabs.

Day old, unwashed skin

Eternally leaning and grinding

Against my sagging belly.

Two or three permeable layers

Of sheets and fluff

Are all that exist

Between me and the pubic hairs

Of the sleeping and sex

Of strangers, passing.

Years marked by
The sweat, the stink, the crust.

Their weight condenses my thoughts,

Crushes my breath.