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Ambergris

A wax-like substance having a brownish gray color and a sweet earthy scent, formed as a natural secretion in the bile duct of sperm whales, which is occasionally found floating in the sea or washed up on coasts around the Atlantic…and has long been used in perfumery. –Oxford English Dictionary

So many fragrances like this: sweet-earthy– a synthetic musk. Ambergris itself so rare, so instead: ambroxides to replicate. The after-scent: metallic, animalic, animal-derived. Resinoid. Used as a fixitive against the wrist and neck like the claws of jewelries. Juliette has a gun, but I have a snuffer uncapped. My base note: woodsy, the top: Neroli and Sambac. I come back, saturated like a pulse point, a piece of flesh fragrant as ocean.

Details disturb, so I’ll donate this day to a dozen dramas. Death doesn’t disturb the doing done by those drawn to duty. Damage—deliberate, direct. I’ll demonstrate with departure, not dinner. A door, not a dress. Drawn to Denver, I’ll disappear, drift down through the Dakotas, dry dinosaur land. Dig below daylight, defy detention. Be my deputy. Be dust. Be dusk. Doug, Dylan, Dexter, Diego? Don’t disclose your name. Just drive.

(Source: All ‘d’ words were taken from the 4/5/2014 edition of The Herald-Times newspaper.)

The Cost of Living

Will doesn’t matter. My heart,  my heart is aching, and hunger  does not show mercy. Cover, cover,  throw sand on flame. Pins and needles like permanent numbness. I’m a fool,  I’m a fool, and I dream reel-to-reel. Closed in a field of red, waist-high flowers. The siren  no longer sacred. Don’t mistake sky for smoke,  what falls for coincidence. Resemblance  curls back on itself with a snick, in shock.

The problem’s not the golf cart but the carnage beyond the fairway where rumors have tall grass greener for concealing the fleet buckings of ham- fisted troubadours strumming a second-hand six-string & singing of a great chain’s careening into ravines like parkour from valance to sash, balance ball to yoga mat. At the singles’ mixer, the pianist bangs the secret chord & caddies adjourn to pickleball courts before members can offer sacrifice : last night was rum-crusted togas, was poppers & breath play & branding irons' scorch, all of it (the contortions, the restraints, the serrated blades) just a matter of course.

Projects

We can’t fix all that we’ve ruined, so can we back off now and let it resettle? It’s easy to imagine so. I am a wild boar and a coward. I clean up. I lose you. I keep losing and refinding my bag. I keep repacking it. I keep forgetting it. I carry it awkwardly. Yay, for ongoing projects!

October 1941 Moy Dorogoy, I can’t see the trees or the leaves – I know it’s autumn by the smell. The air is sharp. As Akhmatova wrote, “I drink to our ruined house.” But there is no drink here. Sometimes your father sneaks a small canteen of water not marred by piss and waste. I never knew the tongue could ache as it does for a crust of bread. Have you heard the birds migrating earlier this year? They screech at midnight. Why are the birds awake? What has happened to this world?! Your father tells me I must be dreaming about the birds. But I only dream of that night we left the university and decided to go for a late-night swim. The water almost arctic and yet, we dove in. Fearless, you called me. You held me. We laughed. What does your laugh sound like? I’ve forgotten the tenor of your voice. I promise to drink to our loneliness together. I know we don’t toast with water, it is bad luck – but I’ll toast with my laughter, though raw as my throat is, listen for the silent bells that are my vocal cords. Ya tebya lyublyu, I

Soften Below

tender the kisses in exchange for fair trade high-alert time away barter the soft shallow lip push your tongue under like water below bridge drift the shipment docks emptying the waterways no longer neutral

still life with pit stop 04.01.2016-04.15.2016

kombucha on day one sore legs in the open air leave the writing where you made it (a fantastic move) there’s a day without its corresponding number back on the horse (in which the horse is on fire) the sparkle goes & the writing goes through it or alongside same knot different gut same venue different words (plus owl) sitting in the skeleton of the lost cafe face to the sun lap of words & then someone else’s table w/ liquids & more words (swear on the full page) it’s a rough life but an excellent hair day it’s a personal apocalypse (practice for the communal one) wordplay with curry (feeling fizzy) one curl meets another

The mosquito net hung in soft waves, draping the shoulders of the queen-size bed like a bride paused at the altar of a hotel room. The walls: paisley and sweating. The netting held back helpful flies, bottle-green bodies pressing close, who whispered warnings into the coiled snail of her ear. The veil blurred the faces of friends circling near, but their humming wings repeated the same word: don’t. On the bed’s wedding day, she lifted the netting from her face and met stone eyes with stone eyes, while petals of insect wings drifted around her. The mattress: a mirror.

In blue jeans and wigs, they know what I am thinking I disappeared among corn energy, lost a star-crossed app, all the constellations were pie Forgot the measurements I needed Under the bed, behind the frame, the junk drawer, an old fridge in a run-down town someone is trapped, my phone buzzing, I know who is in there. The hollows of shoulders: their names: Orion, or Jupiter, or Herculean shelf. I can’t believe you went there. Meanwhile, lemurs, not our friends, the matriarch can be bitchy. Store this in your garden club: No fruit, nano plastics, car parts, a child’s play kitchen, malfunctioning bake setting, a need to open all the windows the inability to move on -- but that in itself is forward thinking

Cinquain for How Sometimes It's the No-Star Food You Remember the Longest

Cheap, not fancy. Eaten in transit. Pistachi- o kulfi on a stick from a kiosk.

1. Walking Bee (the Slow Route)

School’s closed for the season. Cars think they own the zone. Cars think. Met a bee walking: seems worrisome.

2. Proposed Ad Copy

Bees, texts, cars, hives: How many were going to?

It was the afternoon of the school bus rodeo. I could hear in the distance the reckless grinding of gears. Bus drivers were competing on an obstacle course seemingly designed with punishment in mind. I was outside a place called Whitey’s, which boasted the longest stainless steel bar in the world, when a white van pulled up. The driver lowered his window. His face was pale and thin, and he was wearing a yellow straw hat like Van Gogh wore in a famous self-portrait. “Is that Jesus behind the KFC handing out tickets to heaven?” he asked, pointing. The ram caught in the thicket by its horns had oddly human eyes.