Why do you draw the sheets
over your head
and shrink from the day?
Is it because your father
taught you life
was an aching tooth
to be endured until
they finally removed it?
Or that friends’ fatal illnesses
began with nothing more
than a numbness in the arm
or a lump in the throat
and you’ve lost your energy
of late?
Or is it the anniversaries
of those who,
lulled by the frosty season,
never awakened at all?
You search for them
in your brooding dreams,
your footsteps echoing
down deserted streets
in cities with no name.
Stretching out your arms now,
you are relieved to find
a warm body next to yours.
You press her hand
and paddle to the kitchen
and set a pot of coffee there
for two.…
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I’m just one on the assembly line
Strung up on a bar stool
Torso pierced by your
Meat hook irises
Hands glide along the
Glinting metal counter
“Let me buy you a drink.”
Just slip that liquid past my teeth
Let the grog sweeten the meat
You dress my flesh,
Pepper me with compliments
“So pretty,” you say. “Such a pretty girl.”
And I wonder
Do my flanks meet your standards?
Do you enjoy the pulsing
Frenzy of my jugular?
Do you want to drain the blood
From my lips?
Grasp my hips
And split me in two?
Process me
Into pieces
For easier digestion?
Well, buddy
Let me break it down to the bones
You are more like me
Than you’d like to be
And we
Are nothing but
Gristle and stardust
You’ve seen the butcher.…
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I’m sorry Daddy, I made you run. I tried to be good.
I’m your Speedy Stevie, cuz I’m so fast and loud. I screamed real loud that night, huh?
I didn’t know the coppers would come.
I shouldn’ta tried to make you stop.
Or go.
Mama cries all night long, holding her pillow real tight, so I don’t hear.
Trying to make everything white & soft like Snowflake’s fur.
Wishing her pillow was you.
She says it’s not my fault. I was just scared and wanted it to stop.
But she never cried all night ‘til now.
I got so mad yesterday I broke that plane we made. Threw it so hard
it flew straight out the window.
Oh Daddy, I laughed! But Mama screamed and yelled, wouldn’t let me help
or pick up the pieces.…
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The manchild moved to where boys go to bald:
a forest of plaster, his language erased.
A terrier brushed his leg,
he longed to pet its fur.
A boy and girl threw sticks at their ball in a tree,
he starved to reach up and embody their hero.
Into his open sore
he deposited an evening.
He emitted more fluids than his liver contained.
He wondered why tattoos gave their harborers cool,
why men sported earrings,
why women sported earrings.
He lay in the grass and drilled out his mind
for images that could untie old knots,
his sweater sleeves tie
around his hefty waist.
He lay in the grass near beautiful girls;
eye contact was neither made nor kept.
Aspirations to jog, walk
the dog around the block.…
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The sun will tell you
it is too early for destruction
continue to shut the doors and
windows to keep the house from
coughing on your misery
Basket the ripest apples and set them
on your neighbor’s porch with
a recipe for pie crust
Funeral his picture beside
the thickest root where
the moss refuses to grow
Rake a wreath of dry leaves
for kindle and smear mud into
the grooves of his carved name
Evacuate the birds and squirrels
say a prayer for the ants along branches
there isn’t enough time to save them all
Soak the tire swing in kerosene
swing back and forth against gravity
and light a match across the bark
Ignore the smell of burning flesh
let your lungs breath slow and
listen to the scream of leaves
– Karla Cordero …
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St. Mark’s Place at dawn, trash blown, summer light’s perfect clarity so good for artists, wasted here. Lower Manhattan, brick walls remain, black-painted window sills. Somehow I thought the old world hanging on here had some right to peace, even if then or now, there was no peace. From Alphabet City I walk, young enough to be thrilled about it. He lay: rags, or a bag of trash. But a gray-brown face. But black pants, legs bent, shoes gone, one foot bare. I crossed the street. He looked asleep, but something lay too still. The street rose up around him, a pavement’s song, linear harmony, dun and straight. I saw death, & dancing toward the Village, I wondered what this conversation meant: am an urn to filled with flecks of ash, broken centuries later on the floor of sea amid rotten keels, home of colored fish, or, a funnel for all senses, piling cryptic lines like off-kilter bricks in a sagging building?…
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Cold rain stammers on lines of street bricks, worn ideas in rows, stained with tar or blood; read them at your leisure, coffee smoldering in her cup, your sweater bunched at the elbows. Eye shadow left open on the sink. Of tears there is a novel, or dictionary of smudged intentions. Here is a man, there a woman. That’s all the franchise needs to boil. Someone coughs in the night. Match snaps fire, lights a face for a moment. You gave up piano years ago, regrets are fool’s cash. A car door slams. It’s time to leave. Or time for two men to drag you out. Where the trees recline in winter. Dirt garnered, a congregation praying above the dug hole. The only prayer you’ll get or need.…
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