The soap bubble someone left on the edge
of the bathroom sink will burst.

I don’t think Emily died
a virgin the way my friend did.
For some (for me),
it’s been 37 years.

And he drowned
in his own pool.

I just swallowed a bitter pill,
literally. No plastic cups
for water and the prices
went up overnight.

I drink the coffee that should taste
18 cents better this morning

and think about wanderlust.
It’s an incurable desire
to run away from home
or to run headlong into it.

To get lost
or found.

Should have known something
was wrong when he said:
“My favorite movie is
Leaving Las Vegas.”

The young woman who cut my hair yesterday
wore a wide-brimmed felt hat

and tattooed sleeves on both arms
to match her long green hair.

I don’t write about them
because of my fear of my fear
of needles. Too chicken to get
the expiration date

stamp I threatened myself with
when I moved northwest. On my hip.

(He knew she was no good
when he saw her expiration date.)

July 27, 1990. August 31, 1991.
October 1, 1992. April 11, 1993.
November 19, 2002. August 27, 2012.
Or just too many dates to pick from.

Misplaced the cartoon
I stole the idea from.
How uncool is that.
And I will never give up

the period—in a text message,
or a handwritten letter, or any kind of text.

maybe a poem occasionally
when no punctuation will do

I could choose the nickname
“My” and pronounce it “Me.”
I could become more self-referential
than the world’s only corn palace.

I could change the pronunciation
of my hometown. No one would know.

Then there are all the things
she does to remember
to paint her toenails
a shade of dried blood.

Then there’s how she looks
for her perfect accessory
dwelling unit in all the wrong places
the way she used to look for love.

Then there are all the parallel
constructions she creates—
they won’t satisfy
a lyric soul.

No one’s going to rescue her
from tumbling into a pitfall
covered with a thick layer
of lyric soul grit and grime.

Then again every word she wants to use
has become the name of a video game,
or brooding post-punk revivalist band,
or nail polish.

When a hair dye
becomes a mixed drink
and she refuses to use
either. And two rabbits

in an alley won’t alter
the message hidden
in a cellar window well.

The way they freeze
and frame the unkempt path
of grass, dirt, and concrete
is its own refusal.

If there’s blood.
If they die, she will seek
a wild justice.

But first in a hot flash,
she’ll comb the patch
of sky visible between
those two brownstones

for clues of ruined
memory. For a simple
dark cloud

that might break
in time for rain
to cascade
over more red hot rubble.

This wall won’t reveal
the details behind
its missing picture.
Could have been

a photo, painting, collage,
or participation plaque.
The snaggletooth nail
won’t tell.

She’s taken herself
so out of context,
her dreams resemble
sequences from a Cocteau film.

A strong wind
rips a sapling,
roots and all,
from its tree lawn bed.

The wreckage hurts her
the way seeing
a full-grown dead
(human) body wouldn’t.

She watches four women
she’s never seen before
remove belongings
from a downstairs apartment.

For their finale,
they haul
an overstuffed red sofa
out the back door.

She wonders if
Siri is around to give directions.
Or Morgan Freeman, the latest
GPS navigation voice.
She wants to ask:

Who are you?
Where are you going?
How do you know Morgan Freeman?
Is there a god?

Instead, she returns
her gaze to the blank wall.
Its silence
may as well soothe.

Let’s repeal the 22nd Amendment.
Forgive the last
malaprop you heard. A 16th chapel
might get built eventually.

Whoever really said
that thing you love
may not have meant it.
Or changed her mind.

The truth lies
somewhere inside
those quotation marks.
Or died outside the line.

That biopic’s flaws
have nothing to do with
fact versus fiction,
dark versus light,

the time that travels
at lightning speed, or
those hours that get stuck
in a swollen bog.

Even a steel wall
could come down
with enough
enough is enough.

It ends with an orange MGB
crashing into a giant boulder.
But it doesn’t end there.
Was it really orange?

Sometimes there is
an 8th almond
and a giggle
before good-night.

I was the girl
in the boy
on horse
photo framed and hung
on a merry-go-round
building wall.

It was a time
for flip flops;
long checkered pants;
short-sleeved, tie-dyed tees
made from stitched
or stenciled resists.

I fell
in love with a boy
who proclaimed
the world is my ashtray.

Fell harder
for a boy who sang
about ashtray floors and Jesus
never buying any smokes.

Then I fell
for my own
flame. Why
didn’t I resist?

Now that the smoke and fog
have cleared,
I can see how
a childhood fear of fire
might lead to this
clash happy life.

it’s the screen
not the page

the a/c not the ceiling
fan the sun
not the moon

a stage not a cave
it’s a car chase
not an otter
hit by a car

hot flashes not the heat
flash floods won’t help

it’s time
to close my eyes
while another storm passes

dreams not a looking
glass somehow become
the Jersey Shore
sound not sights

going in reverse circles
accordian not fiddle

carousel calliope
not steam locomotive
the PATH not the Tube

or the T

oh, what a night,
mid-June 1991 not
late December 1963

that rollin’ ball
was really a dose
of thunder

it seemed so right but
goes terribly wrong
I rub my eyes

as light smudges
the window pane
and the train stops

The morning after
a milestone, the road
curls under itself.

The day matures
closer without forgiving
clouds. Stilled air.

Deadlines crowd
the calendar. Beyond
the outer ring, risk

of shots being fired
or poured
grows. The morning

after is another
morning with #nofilter.
Believe it, or not.

5,000 words to write home
5,000 steps to take first
5,000 songs to play out

5,000 revolutions per hour
5,000 frames per minute
5,000 fears per second

5,000 drunkometer tests
blurred not erased

5,000 lives to count
5,000 ways to live

without coming undone again
without undoing anyone else

When I return to the scene
of all crimes committed

by/against

me, I have to swim
through hot wind
as it riles the lake.

I return—
funeral after funeral—
the weddings all done.

Mostly botched.
I shut my eyes and pray
for someone to reboot

the country. No, make it
the world. Please, please
admire the deer as it crosses

the road. Don’t shoot.
Ride with the top down.
Drop a name to enter

a private yacht club.
Trespass with glee.
Let the sun settle

in pink streaks
over the river and lake
and sink behind the spit

of land between.
I have always been #3
or so. He scrawled it

on the envelope
that contained the only
letter he ever wrote

me. Born into a country
in mourning, I cry
too easily. White knuckles

and disturbances
beneath my feet, I fly away.
A carousel I cannot forget

appears when I blink.
For the one
who catches it,

the brass ring
could bring another revolution—
not merely another turn.