Lost along the highway that stretches toward the coast,
She stood in the twilight as big rigs sped passing. Her dress
Clung like a label on her narrow shapely frame

Focused on the rigid leather tongue
Snapping past steel posts on the wheel,

I didn’t hear his fist find her cheek.
“Big Poppa Blue! WINNA WINNA.”

My back to them when he smashed her

Provide a picture of yourself
at seventeen, if you don’t mind,
so my dreams of you will be
correctly viewed. We meet now gray,
gravity’s wage deducted from cheeks;

The streets by the beach keep moving you toward
the sunny side of the sea. Where people in hordes
walk out on the boards sniffing the foods on the breeze.

Beneath a billowed sack clothe tent
An auctioneer’s words gallop in dollops.
Foreign-tongued Americans sit in attention.
black-bonneted bidders (number in hand)

You were knit but could not adorn
my arm or be borne on his back.
No one hooked you on a hanger, no.
Miscarriage would hurt me more,
him more than our choice to hide you.

What do we know about the homeless people?
Sleeping in the cracks that we avoid?
Those who’ve turned away from grace & glory.
We turn our backs we’re so annoyed.

Sudden

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

tree leaves become dust covers on foot paths
pecker strikes echo in a hollow branch

Day comes damp and dingy
Seeping through the walls
Boiler’s soiled seepage
Paints a peeling floor.
Dirty laundry, dirty laundry
Smells like soured rain.
Spiders in the corners
‘Till we smoke them all away.

My Old Friends

Cli and ché stopped by today.
The Whore and her Horseman.
They rode in unexpected,
unnoticed by most.
The Unread saw what they were-
ghosts of undead poets.

The meat racks in the mansion house
are topped with memory foam
imported from Scandinavia
On camels by way of Rome.
The carpet on the downstairs wall
is hung in honor of