2:57

revving up for the month of april, where i intend to post a bit each day under certain const(ime)raints. this will mark year three of napowrimo, which before this year didn't really realize was a thing. yesterday i learned what a wombo was. i'm a little slow on the uptake sometimes. today i spent time at the library and sorting through clipart and doing the new-ish office job. happy to be a workin', even with(in) the rain.

in preparation, all the nude accordion

players gathered, their boxes squeezable

their hands and harmonies (hormones) at the ready

it wasn’t too abysmal for the end of matches

some burning thing and then a quiet pause

a forest called for the end of trampling

the seats you were supposed to bring

are all garnished with rest now, no creek

to wade through, no separated shoulder

or rave to scamp with glowsticks.

I was partly myesh, or slef—keyed

into opening like a cabin

and the slurs were easy to roll out

a noodle-like rope slipped from the trunk

of the car back into the home you left

another type of fairy-tale trail

that would be eaten by good intentioned birds

and the madness we suffered was called adulthood

a cheap fixative to ply the calendar with

sticks in all the stone rolled quarters

and nowhere easy to lay one’s head down

for a song—even if it was limber

and galumphed from the wrinkly hands

and worried bodies of poorly trained nudists.

so last century with their concerns

for authenticity.

gears and upping

the ante

so bet your better parts, sew buttons onto the traffic standstill
and for what comes back to bite your ass
there's a mirror to look behind you set up just in front of your face
and the aces are all buried in the deck
some swift handled-barmaid may come along to watch your dealing
or guess how much to lose and sidebar gambling
is a product of illy wrought children

i'm trying here to not notice what the season will be up to when it closes
or how the better pitchers always end up
full of the wrong type of beer
or in the wrong league entirely

come april and the spittoon of fakery
come all you burned ghost factories, spitting new clouds
and bird-shadows into the sky
some sun work is backwards and the retinal cues
a photograph captures will mark each pupil bloodstained.

this i learned from my future
father-in-law
while waiting to fill my jowls with cake

seagulls chased a crow until it landed in home base
and everything went quiet.
trees storing up the sun
had begun to spit up green parts and flowers

my tenses kept catching--

this many days

thinks the drugs

is for the doctors.
and the dreams are for the teeming
the teams for sports and reams of courtroom papers
the gone ingrain sings long in training
a slim machine is freezing rain
and now i've got such
such a carefilled
brain it's almost broken each railroad tie
one neck one sends to the tracks
one brother never comes back
before the beating.

this code is doltish
and a coat i wear
to keep my skin suit
from coming up for air.

and the dry cleaners sing obla-living-on-a-de-da-prayer
just like new jersey's always sworn to go on
long past the thrill.

A Pair of Teeth & WIDE NIGHT

If anyone who reads this is in DC during the upcoming AWP, Flying Guillotine Press authors will be reading at two offsite readings later in the week. Matt Sadler will read at Iota Club and Cafe in Arlington on Thursday night. And on Friday Sasha Steensen and Mark Horosky will be reading at Wonderland Ballroom in Columbia Heights.

Both nights are full of other great readers and the night at Iota will have two bands at the end of the night. Come out and hear some good words, have a few drinks, hang out with small press folk. Punch a duck. Sing to the frogs, whatever.

A Pair of Teeth (Aperatif) Iota Club and Cafe 2832 Wilson Blvd. Arlington VA 22201 7:30-2AM
WIDE NIGHT Wonderland Ballroom 1101 Kenyon St. NW Washington DC 20010 6:30-9:30PM

some say

the ice cream attacked me
while you sat idly by

dim bulbs itching into the early morning
and the ice on the ground is the same
as the ice in your freezer

think what swears for the working man
and all the fortunate imposters
whose wounds heal beautifully
because they're putty
and very pretty beneath all that foundation

some say it's easy to bend your climate
or take another year to flop
it's a guess you make with numbers
a very important guess

Everybody knows this is nowhere

and for a song that short, yes
like a founding match and its lick of fire--how to turn one simple thing into another.
i watch the television with an ease that's hard to refund
i clap when all the gameshows growl
and when i'm painting my crows back into the sky
the sattelites go bling-bling, blind

remember the neutron dance? remember the pointer sisters?
i've got a snowstorm in mind and a white datsun pickup
there's a new neighbor joining the next accident
there's a flap of skin to drape over each eye
and the 1980s came down like a stray dog, hungry and matted

my curse and cure is almost memory.