Down, Down

I learned all the lessons of cement
by falling down pitted, dusty steps.
It's a consolation, this knowledge.

My sexiness couldn't protect me,
nor did well-meaning tips change my mind.
I was a female doctor, dammit.

They stripped me of my Donna Karan;
now I scrummage like a thrift store rat
in a maze of snap diagnoses.

Y-Y

In an attempt to spit you out,
I saw we'd become one body.

We already share the template
to a double-Y chromosome.

Your long torso, my openness:
we will never turn from virtue.

My hands and feet are cemented,
nor can I hold you in my teeth.

Still just one of us can appear
in the same place at the same time.

Kev

Sucker's Dozen

Feel like your ex-husband is trying to shake you down?
Cannot stand the thought of dogs trapped in homes of the poor?

You can stop dropping off drugs and groceries and checks.
You are correct as the Constitution: they suffer.

What if you were suddenly removed from your context.
You would lick the forearm of a vivisectionist?

See a world that's just a sham Welcome mat for the lost.
Imagine you're there with the emotions of a pup.

You find out that gravity is the only power.
But you can't cure brutality by being a whore.

Jan
"I'm bad!"

Come Down Mthyuh

I stay up in Pennis, near Ground Bay. There's some RV resorts and a gas station with a POD. They have a golf course and some cows grazing moss on the Dirtiest River in the World. Mondays Mike comes down Mthyuh for feed and takes the pups while I work cement and watch cable at Chank Suites, 60 hours a 4-day week. I drop about two-fifty on booze and groceries and lodge it against the back of the bed. Don't need much hay. Llamas ran off with a minstrel. This is just until he can get a second mortgage or some family help. Then we'll build a fence the girlz can't chew and still have gophers on their plates every day. We used to call it Death Farm 3000 for all the graves. But Mthyuh turns up her babes and they walk away. When the filter's up the sky is clear of pests.

Come down Mthyuh with your truck,
Come down the mountain
Where life isn't measured;
Bring your extended cab full of dogs.

Kev

milk stigmata

When I breach one of Hoolie's commandments it's because I'm teasing for fear he'll become stigmatatose. I, a picaro, have learned to test how far he's gone. Man of searching, hysteria, visions, your love erupts in giving. We must keep him laughing, his heart chakra massaging itself with rocking guffaws or irony gently squeezing. In melancholia, Mthyuh leaks proteins and bastes her adopted king in a yoke. Shivering, he may find some rags or plains mammals to coddle. Wandering, he intersects his bloodline on a spirograph of orbits. Whimpering, he can drag along a civilization like a bitch still with pups on her tits across the grass on her way to piss.

Peg

Shopping Bag Full of Dildos

You take decisions, you make purchases;
And then there is a shopping bag full of
dildos. It makes you think about death.
What if you died. And they have to do t
-hey thang and come all up in your hous
-e. They define you by your decisions, y
-our purchases. A procession of the livin
-g parade through dead-eying all the cra
-p. A dildo means you are either not a te
-am player or having way too much fun
with the one you are supposed to natur-
ally complement. That's no compliment.
A bag of dildos unpackaged means they'v
-e been in action. No one wants to touch
them. It would be like cleanup for a guns
-hot victim. There would be sawdust. Yo
-u might try explaining that latex natura
-lly sweats. That it explains a perceived s
-liminess. Your mother might go for that.
But you're dead.

Peg

Missionary Guilt

WAYNE:
the redness of your lips is extending its boundaries;
kissing a man with a goatee can really rip you up

JAN:
more than sucking my husband's mustache, only the smell of
his loins, close enough, represents the call of life for me

WAYNE:
gripping your upper arms, I can tell just how strong you are.
it gives me confidence to tangle with your weaknesses.

JAN:
why must I fear a sociopathy in my brothers
with you, an apologia for masculinity?

WAYNE:
my greatest crime but that which I am most prone to do
would be holding you dear enough to serve as an off'ring.

bent anachronism

I know I can't shake my head too hard. There's been no moon for a couple of nights. Getting used to the high beam flipper in the new hooptie. Waking up in a pool of lipstick tubes at the bottom of the boat told me I'd been in a real bumper. I scratch across the desert pavement on my knees. Jumping cactus smoldering and weeds. Foliage, then fire. A feathered witch pokes at the holey cholla bone with a stick. AAA on the way. Jan, wait for me.

"Wayne, my main enchufe at TRW, protege. You will learn the tricks of trade in charms and powders."

So you are the Chama. They said you were a topless Afro-American in her thirties.

"We will shapeshift and read coals together."

That one says you're hot. Boom! I like you.

"Father."

No...

Ashes and sand blew into ripples around the Chama and took her shadow in the ridges of its trunk. Crickets chattered. Wayne could see the spines. Then he could pull a rabbit out of a hat. Then he could manage his family. Then he could finish his work. Then he accepted two soft-centered suckers from the tow-truck driver. They drove over horned toads, out of the land painting, off MPS grounds. The road was not so black.

Mock Self Finger Feeding

It's not that we happen to be; we have to be.
If it happens to us, it'll happen to everybody
else. We're the great experiment, and we ar
-e still interesting. See all civilization's capita
-ls, writhing. I would encourage you to do w-
hatever rocks your float, and is also self-suc-
coring [mock self-finger feeding]. It can't hel
-p but help fill the moat what helps the good
tidings to overflow on all the old-folks homes.

Donna
"I typed it with my thumbs!"

Shiv Overdose

Family of Consumers

We live interdependently, buying style and smartly. Any moment of piggishness is copacetic in
the privacy of your home. We are a network of understanders, tapping heaven's color palette. If
you sign up for automatic transaction, you barely feel the entries and egress, and if you get the
rhythm, it starts to generate a flow, a chi-wave. You can look like the foto in the public oracle
dispenser if you stay up to date. We are all on the same page: a rubber slide that feels like
leather. It's a company with roots, entanglements, holes. We can produce chillun this way. We
can whistle them like smoke into another century, remembering. As we speak, my fingers are
writing checks. We know the weather in Orlando, Bensenville, Cliffe Suites. We can be there on
the morrow, while always in reach of the beam. A two-way street means we take our knocks in
the surf. The elite might be hypnotized by their space on the curve, no matter how far they've
turned. It's the bold hang from a big arm that will catapult our moon shots. It's the brave step we
don't take, for the wurl, which the generations wud want this way. Boys and their machinations
are under branding, butterflies, every gesture, expression, attempt: ours to claim. Every knee
jerk or shudder just creates more gism. We are a chain of strangers, enemies, happy to be sealed
from any one asshole's greed. Leadership means take our emotions and lay out the whole runway
so we can see our land. We will work for solids, make waste of air, enter a future every day. Our
aim is to clock in, collaborate, live, breed. Salt of the Sea and cream soda is the Mthyuh's fetish.

Donna
Sears Parking Lot

Salty

If I have cash and I'm willing to pay up now, would you let me offer them a bit less than your mass-mail quote..? No it was personalized, but by a computer printer, that's all. Say 18 percent of the new total including interest..? You could fax me the agreement, and if you'll accept a card tied to my bank account, we can settle this today. What is your percentage, sir..? Because you know if I claim 13, game's over for us both.

Donna leaned back against the tile kitchen counter top in her yellow gauze Charro pijama and farted. A salty peanut shell cracked between her teeth.

No, I'm not swimming in money that's exactly right. All I've got to eat is snack food. OK. Give me a minute to plug it in. I'm a doctor for chrisake. And dog food. Never thought it cost this much. I'm feeding you out of my bitches' mouths, mister.

Dr. Thong had been physician to super shiv-stars and wandering freaks. Now barely able to keep Juniper, La-La and M'Lady in kibble, she wondered if someone wouldn't once slip her a pro-bono, as she had done, on so, so many occasions. Was Kevin on some kind of Jesus trip? He had once, as a walk-in, asked her to put him down. Now he frequented a fiery healing pool.

O' Kev. You could touch my coin purse at least. We bonded on a pill-bottle bed, and that pumping beat. How could I know a lapse of shiv could trigger a random shiv test and set me up to lose my license all for a rotten night of hounding?

Idling Caprices

Now that the swimming pool had been drained for good, Mike took up with new ways and associates. One amante at the Preservation Society, another down at Shiv Council. A scientist, an accountant, a bum. Let bloom a goatee and a black, open-shirted look. Got into trouble with rents and men all the way to Cliffe Suites. Until he showed up here one morning.

"I'm looking for Julio."

"Do you mean Hoolie?"

"Told me he lived out back in the shed."

"We don't live here at all. We..."

"Julio." He was looking over my shoulder at I guessed Hoolie.

"Mike." Hoolie says behind me. I step out of the way and they say,

"Just because there's no water, don't mean you can't dive."

"We squirmed like eels in another atmosphere."

"Even while lawn salad bobbed on top."

"But now it's a neck breaker."

"NO. We've got lungs now. Ears."

"We've got the Filter down and K's rampaging."

"Yeah. I let 'em out. One of my pranks. Come dark-rule the chanks with me."

"NO. Come with us. We're deities."

"NO. My life is free."

"NO. You are a slave to shiv and idling caprices..."

As the sun set, the two worked out their issues. Silhouettes in pink on the listing log cabin porch. I, a woman, could not intervene. I wasn't even sure if Mike had the right guy. Hoolie isn't Mexican.

Chama-tilly

Dogreeve

Chemical Prayer

I can still think even though most of my muscles are under remote control. This reminds me of an office job I had while I could still cover my spines. Repetetive movement. I could staple six reports at a time. My finger muscles got strong playing canasta with Sylvia and Tom. If they could see me now. Soaring over a canyon. Bringing home lost ducks. Men. To my nest. To PharmSupply.

It started as an offering, because I believed in my culture's nirvanic system. Here, look what I've found. I am a cat with a bird, but no. A bird with a cat. Then the Mthyuh Preservation Society ruled to let the corporations infiltrate the Shiv, and then... It doesn't matter if you are a lesbian when... they are force working and resting you, cramping your style.

My African-American news anchor husband and mulatto kids: waiting in some hiya-percha. I am employed, enslaved, an appliance plugged in. Retrieving robot falcon. I try to be gentle, but they have fitted me with metal. Plucking an individual from a park or deserted place, there is almost no sound. One must clap one's beak around those who insist on retreating indoors.

All I want is to get my puppies to safety. You implanted your motivator chip right near that instinct. Sometimes they dangle from my toenails and mouth both as I sightsee my worn track. One day I'll find my kids and have an operation. I'll go back to them and explain how tied up I've been. You told me I could retire in a temple and invite all my friends.

Peg

Explication

Promise
this song, an avatar

Here in a trophied stone house,
the game cottage, game heads on walls

where palace charnel begins
meat meant for kings is first sacrificed and carved here, enabling their generations

its wet and glittering course,
see silver trays piled with fresh moist legs and chops bobbing up a path to the castle, into royal mouths, in royal peristalsis

I offer my fingertips,
this is where I choose to make a commitment, to reach out to the infinite (future)

blind and pendent ministers
active faith in our love, suspended in darkness

of last-moment innocence.
as yet but terminally unrequited

There in pierced forgiving skins
stacks of tiger hides on which you recline, their beauty has absorbed the violence of penetration

blood charges your perfecture
you on the other hand are throbbing with present life in a space that you experience from the inside out and I from the outside in

and can whisper a promise
blood, an excited pulse, rushes in your ears

while hours press beyond my lips.
that's how you'll remember me, how I'll speak to you, in that sound


Tom

Promise [the MP3]

Graveyard of Gay Guys

graveyard of gay guys,
my squinting eyes make
it eerie, misty in the sun,
forest of missing crosses.

from everywhere you come,
hankies on sticks and maps,
as if you were starting over,
shoe trees, trunks, tie racks.

and I am sticky progeny
of hard spirits who went
far into spirituality, giants,
monsters, preachers, deities.

Am I sent here to pitch
or to receive? A calling is
a sign of psychosis, OCD.
Here I lie on your beds.

Hoolie

Canned Corned Beef and Cream Corn Casserole

Chama and Ilyn hid out in the dark cabin. After a while they started asking each other what time it was and then after a while longer they stopped answering. Chama explained later, "We felt that what happened had certainly been important, but we were nevertheless left dumbfounded. Then we began to chafe at the practice of assigning significance to events that were painful and therefore disturbing but really no more than blips of chance on a wheel. The filter wasn't working and a few of the flakes had already been carried away. We could hear commotion, heavy things dropping on pavement. The safest thesis statement? 'You just never know.' But also the most unsatisfactory. Then we decided we just had to break down and create meaning, like the opposite of breadcrumbs, tossing out floating disks on which to step across the Crack. Meaning was in our heads. That was what we were born and trained for: this was our moment to shine a light, as if, and leave nothing in our wake because there was nothing to leave. Everyone in fact paid us for that. Ilyn hurried and thought up some songs. I scarified and painted my chin. We found a canned corned beef and cream corn casserole in the freezer."

Sermon

in weariness
the Earth's nougat
cast up stronger
her lasso.

in this contest
only a taut heart
against her pistons
can save you.

while listening
as other creatures
die of what we call
bad timing,

in some folks' minds
poverty of movement
was their keeper
from friction.

Ilyn, Brother. Sermon, frag. 11-14

Time on a Stump

The meatgrinder of life had Kev speaking in star patterns and twisting himself up into every single asshole and grilled. Always hot yet or because hurting, Kev's tears were rain for doves. Everywhere Kev turned, there were democratic users of love.

Kidnapped by a buyer/hoarder trick, he stared for a while at the top of a shopping-bag chank: a slice-o-wood clock with its plasticine bark rested on a cardboard ox. Time moved batteried and therefore temporarily unfettered there, on its stump. Bhut whut was to become of us coincidentally, in our later years, sufferers of severe drying?

Kev's Biggest Wanter

Devices

The Can Opener and The Wine Screw

In the wake of a white tornado, two
surface structures abide, ready.
We can wait while the contents of
several different cans bubble tog-
ether in a large can.
Some wine had to be thrown in,
and now the bottle is open.
Perplexing. Staining red hydr-
aulics charged with an acid.

by Hoolie

Rattlesnake of a Timex

I looked out at Juniper's shadows of ears on the sand,
a Peace symbol. While other dogs might freak out, or
want to always stay in, he found a place he had sniffed
well, a shallow but wholesome place, where he could r
-est in his own skins until summer came. Juniper, a st
-eady berry, you unfold to me each day yor surprises.

Dr. Thong