- Burn one bloody,
wax and pin a rose
on it, frog sticks in the alley.

bread drawer squeals, cash register dings, cups
and saucers, cups and saucers, pick up bell, bread
drawer squeals, cash register dings, a rubber sole scuffs
across the linoleum, a man coughs, the front door slams

- One radio sandwich,
one mother and child
reunion, and Noah’s
boy on bread.

stacked dishes  rattle past, spoons chime plates, sirens
outside, cursing from the kitchen, pick up bell, pick up
bell, a woman laughs, bubble gum bubbles bursting

- Gimme a honeymoon with
Tommy and a black and blue
with a Murphy, whistleberries
in the alley.

carpet shop jingle from the radio, a litany of hiccups,
water glasses tinkling, soda fountain hisses, cash register,
pick up bell, cups and saucers, brakes squealing on the street
outside, high heels on the floor, a booth cushion exhales, a counter
stool swivels, an air compressor sighs, a knife drops to the tile

- Got a blue plate,
make it a crowd.

- I need an Adam and Eve on a
whiskey raft and wreck ‘em, zeppelins
in the fog, a bowl of red, and a plate of
foreign entanglements.

- One well dressed dinner all
hot in the alley, and the gentlemen
will take a chance.

- Put out the
lights and cry.

He kissed her lightly that day in the park shelter house, a grand old iron thing, a Victorian bird cage awash in falling leaves, trailing firework flutters caught up and swirling on moody, shifting gusts. Her hair fell away from her face and her dark eyes were the beginning and end of him, he thought, what with the taste of her skin and the smell of hardwood burning in nearby fireplaces, the elements of a spell coalescing into an enchantment of binding and blood and other such left-handed magicks.

The park is gone and forgotten by most. So too are the deer that had often played there in the meadow, fragile and timid and out of place, along with the birdcage and the maple, the sycamore, the walnut, the oak, the paper birch, and the elm; all of them gone, so far and inevitably gone that it makes no sense to mourn their loss. Just gone. But in his mind there persisted an ember in the flickering remembrance of that crimson leaf and its precise and angular edges, tucked within her raven ringlets. There it lingered, a smoldering bit of hexfire waiting for a drier season to come along, one better suited to bewitchment and nostalgia than the logical parade of dog days stretching out ahead.

the songbird that sang
outside my open window
all last night was gone when morning rolled back
around, leaving only a headful
of fleeting memories
her harmony
her voice
lingering
in my mind all day long and well
into eventide, the first
without her though it seemed
just the same as the rest
despite the moon refusing
to shine

Taffeta and Cordage

our minds, like breath
inflate the text, swelling it
into something full and round
the lines and words and letters
growing farther and farther apart until
the space between them is revealed and the things
that exist there within flourish and
it becomes a balloon untethered
borne aloft by the buoyancy of imagination
with its craft and passengers best suited
to romance and adventure and left
at least a bit wiser for having seen
the landscape below from a novel vantage point

Her Much Rumored Whereabouts

looming like red rider-backs
Hindu shuffled and itchy palms
strange shadows beneath familiar elm trees
a street lamp drawn across the water, a shimmering dream almost as real as what shines above but lacking in its depth and clarity
among us fools on this bridge between two shores and the greedy dogs
lockjawing bones and growling at their own reflections
chained to the moment, bent towards blue shift and victims
of wave collapse
while she dances across the sky
as recognizable as the moon in daylight
to just right songs at just right moments
in empty busy places and occupied empty spaces and the stray
pompous conversations and sincere hellos of strangers in passing