Days of Snoods & Bamboo Curtains


scenting everything
like, by god, my heart showing up in a tiki glass

Me in some red satin bustier, perfectly presentable

like he may shorten his tie and resort
to fisticuffs  -kiss, kiss-
spilling scotch on my bared midriff

I sign my consent to his overtures—
knock 'em  back, full of raw egg

Limbo unfolds the orange pocket square of its loins

His gold El Dorado takes a second bow
takes three days to call, but eventually does

Oh, wow, wow, he strangles me
with a Cuban stocking—
the gin rummy room full of gardenias

Mr. Hardboiled, blue with lust, letting me live








Above the Law


You hover like a severed hand—you
Dario Argento haired cutlet of "woo"

(Blood curtains down the staircase)

Not wax, but debt under the nails
An axe wings past, splits your velour
casing, never vermouth, my sweet

(spirits lace fast your hushed caul)

Little lacquer owls go "who?"
From the eaves of destruction







The Room Folded in Gelid Light


there was a wrought iron hole in my body
from my bed the retractor looked far away

I fingered the grillwork, the cool hard
lips of the thing someone said had teeth

might bite my finger, somebody said
don't touch now, germs, in any case

mea culpa, what was I doing trapped
in a storm drain in the first place

somebody said I must be patient now
patient as patio furniture

it was out of my hands
there were eggs stuck in my iron mouth

my head swayed, an airy addendum
the soft shells pulsed like shrapnel

they were lodged in my coal hole
somebody said say you are only a house

I am only a house, good, now breathe