WITNESS

In rows, windows across the street flicker out,
their slow flames, their steady yellow notes fading.

Something goes dark in me.

But if I wait long enough, until morning,
I know those lights will come on again.

It's that simple, paying witness to the living.

MY LITTLE TURNKEY

You hold the key.

I check my watch. 2 minutes to Lights Out.
We make some small talk; the weather, the movies,
which latest starlet we’d like to fornicate with.

You say, the tattoo on my right forearm
is actually a hieroglyph, tying me to a proud
lineage of pre-Columbian warrior kings.
I say, Nice pitch. Try again.

You say, It’s really about my mother,
my real mother, the woman I’ve never met.
I say, Can you even read my right forearm? And just like that, the tattoo is gone.

You smile, a little abashed.
Time’s up. Lights Out.
You get up, gently close the door behind you.

Turn the key.

I’m under your watch, but I’m watching
you leave, down the long, scalloped
shadow play of the corridor, a light bulb
just starting to flicker out overhead.

I go to say something, but I realize
you’ve taken my tongue with you,
a mute and indefensible talisman
carefully folded inside a clean, white towel.

SKINS

My bones turned, I was laced to them.
I was called, Suckling, Dick-Weed, Geek. How I begged for them,
for their dense, sturdy length,
maroon and green, to cover me,
thumbs hooked through belt loops, stance casual as flipped baseball cards. Please, I'm old enough. I need a pair
of "Toughskins."

HALF-BROKEN

Here, where late sunlight slants
through green park benches, half-broken,and the first brown leaves of autumn are scurrying, two twelve-year olds flash past,
side by side on mountain bikes, furiously pumping.
One struts his voice, breathless,
Let's check out those dumb bitches down by the swing set.
They're gone, heartbeats coaxing the air like tiny engines.

And I think how much is told through the body, how little I know.

A PARADE…

marches in weak autumn sunlight.
We are ghosts, firefighters,
devils and robots and melting men. Jack-o-lanterns set crooked grins.

What we hide is in plain sight.

SACRAMENT

The night burns. On the tongue,
some beer and last crumbs,
a murky sacrament.
I light a candle and look out.
Bleak, yellow-slitted windows look back. There are always candles burning
down to ponderous white lumps
by the open doors of a cathedral, breathing in easy sways against the daylight.
They burn for the dead, make you
want to whisper.
But these lights are for the living,
their slow, cautious corridors,their wax anthologies and bric-a-brac…

SHALLOW THROAT

I’ve been counting the words caught in my throat.
I know how my own hunger could split me open.
I see the wound of my body exposed in text book diagrams; coiled, naked organs.
Half-finished men trapped there, frozen beneath the icy lid of plastic overlays.
Each one a shallow grey boat,
each one a drowning victim.