Probably got another one

scrubs in sealed shipping bags
heavy lined plastic, bar code
stickers, shoes obvious shape

stacked unskewed in a tower
busy representing a symbol of
a meaning to life's true answer

was nursing assistant school a
reasonable choice for me, the
first person since in my tree

since our species's ancestors
that developed little more than
an anus and a mouth, and we

trace our lineage back to one
of those; though the model
they've identified it looks like

a mouth similar in appearance
to a butthole, but both takes
in and out or possibly blows

the shit out through ears all
over its body, which had hair;
a heart is an undersea creature

squeezing like a jellyfish, and
always in liquid, the ribs a
hamster wheel of swimming

what ligature has to strap this
demon in to lunge for life as
might a racehorse but to eat/

shit; never really free except
for chemically, and in mama-
lian skin, it's too dark to see

but these thoughts populate
anxiety attacks as much as
organizations jonesing to

know your race / "heritage"
so they can put you in touch
with genetically linked others


Dr. Donna Thong
"Licensure in Dispute"

Age of resentment

We got into the grant program that paid for all our books
We get to class the first day and it says TIP: patients do not like to see excessive
jewelry or visible tattoos and there we were with our necks inked out in
shooting stars, both of us, by coincidence

Funny though how i'm like this mama polar bear pregnant with four babies barking out
orders and everyone scrambles to do what i want it's bitchin
they find out how many fetuses you've got and they take any abuse you can give them
but then i feel a little bad afterwards, but i'm fighting for my kids


Mkidza Mlaf

Hospice town

Bordering the frontier a town
splays greenly above a reservoir
kicks out sprays of dry mock-
flower leaf, like a movie lot
in a canyon sheltered from plan-
etary winds, still, magenta
and violet and mock-lavendar
where people say it's a spirit
place, where you come to get
in touch with healing power of
eponymous indigenous graves
and lots of folks who are well
paid for healing in case the
canyon moons, road runners
cannot quite get accomplished
for what the great spirits paid
in other words it's a whore town
a hospice town where therapists
palliate your last moments in
a state where you don't care
about the difference, as your
barber might be fine as last
confessor, it was where they
all came for the community
and low-cost care and healing
and either died or kept on
fucking us, them, each other
retaining that moment of last
meal pleasure forever, fading,
but whoring one for another


Hoolie
Late Revelations
Cliffe Suites

I went far

Now upon the return and in the glow of
the full moon out back i see i went far

Was it ingenuous to go away to live as
an outsider among a foreign tribe or in

Local outposts of the mind, violate the
hours that most would call a proper day

Or heroic to spin amok like weather to
create mock fortunes of errata until the

Axis tilts your head back to a familiar
square, a silent ticker-tape procession

And bent so, where you've been is up-
side down, yet somehow a perfect yarn

And thank your stars we've lived with-
out the anxiety about the breeding loop

No need to strain to imagine that one's
thoughts, approach, intent are common

Yet still without escape from the human
drama, played always on one instrument

Cradling my baby on this glacial shelf
a green northern light seems a beacon

The night we gave ourselves to the sky-
wide mystery, sparkling black screen

We cast it as a convergence or scheme
meant to recycle my past and his future

And take us, take us presently to some
longhouse or cloud palace, sleep, breast



Chamatilly
Late Shard #4

Invocation

when you came downstairs and stood perpendicular and silent in the kitchen
i realized there is a lot of language going on inside your ostensible muteness
and i wanted to tell you to just say out loud whatever you are rehearsing now

the tell was how you stroked at your cheek, a move someone else might fake
you know how people do to make it look like they're struggling with thought
all to protect a glorious micro-nap or stolen raptured stare into open-eye void

i too at the same moment self-realized my option to withhold, self-lobotomize
because there's no shame in disengagement, only a respite, a faith-driven sleep,
or a spirit to invoke when you want most specifically for a nearness of bodies


By Mike
"For Quan Li"

Lucre Leather Labor

because i had to climb atop so many species to be king
that thought translated into oh the same with other races
within distinctly mammalia, mother, i still trade in kisses
even after discovering rubber, i scrape flesh from suede
or the energized and conscious wholes, i point they shoot
why don't i simply fade if the objective is sheer numbers
my abject brothers must see it in my face, a winning self


La Chama
Greatest Hits, Golden Era
Collar of Skulls Press

Stalked By My Own Husband

I thought no one was there but
he was in the dark kitchen star-
ing. Sometimes his soft carpet
footsteps stop just outside my
office. When we watch TV, he
faces me perpendicularly on a
settee. He follows me around
the house, not when we're out.
If he were a top it would make
more sense. It's like the prey
hunting the hunter. It might've
jived in other times, locations,
but it can't be "you'll spoil it by
talking" if there are eggs to fry,
decisions, household decisions.


Sylvia
"I am Tom's wife."