What I Am Left With.

We Are Against It

2011-12-14T15:36:00.001-05:00

"I want to submit someone else’s work. What’s your stance on plagiarism?"

GENESIS.

2011-10-26T02:25:00.000-04:00

Two poems will appear in the next edition of IUPUI's Genesis magazine.

This will be my third appearance.

Winter In Town

2011-05-16T03:55:00.001-04:00

Clouds overcast cars in ditches. Backs bending at the break of an early morning. Shovels scrape concrete. Under the snow the sidewalk feels damp, unmistakably warm. My love for the sun is circumstantial. Heat moves spontaneously, tempting thermodynamics to take a break. Blue-collar workers wake and commit blue-collar crimes. Fingers yellow from tar, bodies become restless in the absence of money.

This morning Malcolm is the first call, the first to remind me it’s noon on a Monday. I’ve been late to work everyday since orientation. He tells me another prefabricated excuse will only buy me a few minutes. He suggests I jog off a few calories, sweat out a few toxic inhibitors and take a shower. He says it will feel good to do something, that he can’t cover my ass again until Tuesday.

Malcolm is the kind of grizzly looking bastard you want on your side. But not always by your side. Over the phone I could hear his bear-like belly bellow, harboring a cheap laugh or suffering from indigestion. Everyday I remind him, for a Canadian homosexual he doesn’t eat near enough poutine or dick. I sloth my way from one side of the bed to the other. Heeding Malcolm's advice, I take the day’s first nap in the shower. Cold water directs my senses to the smell of burnt english muffins.

I leave the house and head downtown where the city seems empty. I try to remember tiny snapshots of the people occupying the bus stops, corner cafes, taking their damn sweet time crossing crosswalks. Snapshots of blurred lives seen through bus windows, filtered through exhaust fumes. Before work, I take lunch to ensure that I am late.

Genesis Spring 2011

2011-04-11T02:25:00.000-04:00

A couple poems will appear in IUPUI's Genesis magazine. I believe the magazine is released Wednesday.

Lune.

2011-04-05T01:49:00.000-04:00

A few months ago myself and a couple of friends record this album, now we are giving it away for free. There is an improvisational spoken word piece at the end of the last track. Regardless of how well the album is recieved, it is my favorite thing I have ever played on/ helped piece together.

http://lunetheband.bandcamp.com/

Face.

2011-04-05T01:46:00.000-04:00

Apparently, I am the face of IUPUI poetry.

Humorous.

http://poetry.iupui.edu/

I'm still writing, working on something daily... when this semester is over I'll start submitting and posting poems/ flash pieces on the blog. In the meantime, Neil submitted a 10 page joint poem he and I wrote a while back to The Seattle Review. I'm petitioning for him to post it on the blog.

Further Sun

2011-02-09T00:28:00.002-05:00

I remember subtle differences.

Girls singing big-tit lullabies,
kneeling by the bed,
cupping their breasts in prayer.

Hips thrusting towards conversation.

Boys wasting their time.
Tiny hairs mounting their top lip
like side-burn discharge.

Newspapers read of a girl strangled
by a man. Somewhere in Northern, Indiana.
Overnight, 1999 grew cold.

Novelty became a tough act to follow.

I remember pay-per-views with Grandma,
a bowl of popcorn between us.

Time seemed frozen, the jukebox on quarantine.

Selected.

2010-12-01T22:35:00.002-05:00

"It's my honor to inform you that "A Nightmare Between Friends" was one of three poems selected by blind review to represent our program in the AWP Intro Journal Award Series competition. The contest is highly competitive: your poem will be read alongside entries from creative writing programs nationwide, including MFA selections. But it's a great honor to be chosen, and again, I would like to congratulate you on your fine work."

A Nightmare Between Friends

2010-11-29T00:23:00.003-05:00

after Goya's Disparate sin título

I want an escape, someone new
stretched out in the sidecar of my slumber.
I am a scapegoat of habit, a coward
reaching for some fellow passenger
to share my nightmares with. Before sleep
I arrange the events of the day,
compile faces I have stumbled past
in my travels: anxious young strangers
who have nodded towards me
or sat shifting in their seats, edging
towards the door. I collect them,
file them neatly in my hand
as I pull back my sheets and slide
my arm under the cold pillow.
In dreams, I'm looking for the shape
of a girl, personal armor,
someone to occupy this temporary hell with.
A person I can lie to, not next to.
Someone who believes the world is humid,
someone stuck reconstructing
the anatomy of a roadside snack.
I need a reason for sleep.
Someone to taunt me awake.

Ghost Walker Or A Ghost Walking

2010-11-29T00:05:00.007-05:00

I close my eyes, see a flashing black arrow:
a ghost walker or a ghost walking.
I can't stop thinking about the West,
how at sixteen I was almost gone.
I dined by gaslight then,
used all ten fingers when praying.
Somewhere in the distance, a train kissed the silence,
a seabird drug its flag over land.
Horn-rimmed glasses corrected misprints of vision.
A sign read: Buy Land, Build An Empire

Circulation

2010-11-29T00:02:00.003-05:00

In winter, the dying linger.

My father contemplates the drunken whispers
of the waves. He relishes his last breath of crisp fall air.

His boat idles at the gates of a rotting slalom course.
Words shiver from his mouth as he damns the river.

A snowflake lands near his tongue.

For a moment he has a youthful palate,
the childish inclination to enjoy the cold.

Frozen water sits on top of freezing water
like ice cubs floating in his drink.

Another northern winter triggered by tragedy:
student dies by drowning, ingestion of water.

A tobacco-dry sunset offers the last temptation
of warmth, teasing colorless, ungloved fingers, illuminating
nicotine-stained and callused knuckles.

A few pop cans and abandoned buoys line the shore
where the last of the fall leaves roll,

A plastic bottle floats before taking on water.
Brittle limbs snap.

The trees sound like rain.

Beach Season Was Over

2010-10-24T17:43:00.001-04:00

Chicago might have smelled like  cinnamon and chocolate.

At Lincoln Hall, I waited in line.
Wind rolled cold waters.

Love escaped to smoke a cigarette.
Waves of patrons sailed along the sidewalk, 
broke on the corner, and wrapped  around the building.

I could hear the sound of rocks beating a nearby dumpster, 
already bloodshot with rust.

Behind me on the wall
someone had written:
Fire from the Lord burns among you.

An interesting sentiment. Was it true?

*

My eyes disappeared into my hands.
I rubbed my face. My mind shipwrecked,
sinking to the bottom of Lake Michigan,

thoughts submerged like the L.R. Doty, 
a steamship sitting perfectly preserved 
for one-hundred and twelve years.

She was a ship carrying a cargo of corn
into a violent gale of sleet, snow
heavy winds and hefty waves.

A three-hundred-foot behemoth,
pulled to the lakebed
by its own steel arches.

The whole crew was lost under the same 
pumpkin-shaped sliver of moon
that reminded me it was October.

*

Love returned a few cigarettes later,
her tiny frame shaking inside
a black sweatshirt.

I was tempted to offer my coat,
or suck the nicotine off her lips. 
Instead, I ignored the need for a fix.

I wanted to listen to her chest beating
as her body went numb, limp beneath
candy-colored bed-sheets.

I wanted to find myself between
her breasts or tattooed thighs,
damp with sweat.

Listening.

Soft, uncalloused heels locking  
behind my head, breathing cautiously
or forgetting to breathe at all.

We were transfixed with the illusion
talk provided. She wasn't in love
with the idea of marriage,
she was married to the idea of love.

Outside, you could hear the
bass guitar rumbling. I could feel
the kick-drum inside my chest.

*

The ninety-eight-year-old building's pulse raced. 
Tired feet ignited with shuffling, 
footsteps pounding the pavement to the doors.

People hustling inside to hear 
the stir of the stagehands
sound checking the instruments.

Urban congestion glistened in a nearby puddle. 
It was raining.

Peopled staggered towards the stage from the bar,
fumbling in their pockets for a tip.

Slowly the venue filled.

Months prior, the building had been dust-covered,
construction workers welding,
sawing, hammering towards reopening.

It's roof was the place where sharpshooters stood 
to prevent John Dilinger
from escaping the Biograph Theater.

Somehow, it felt like Dillinger's night turned out 
better than mine. His had a conclusion.

I imagine Chicago felt spacious then,
a lifetime ago when you could still tell north from south.
I looked across the street to the red pressed brick

and white-glazed terra cotta of the Biograph,
trying to remember what Dillinger had seen that night.
I wonder what he thought of the ending.

After the gun-smoke cleared, did he crawl
towards the lake through the blood, inching for
one last taste of water?

*

Tonight the absence of responsibility hung in the air.

It had been a good year.
Soon everything would turn to shit.
It was the year the church paid

to tune the baby grand.
A hand-of-God moment.
Life felt close at hand,

a lap piano for the bed-ridden.

Next year we'd return, reminiscing
over spiced lattes. Reminding ourselves
what remained the same.

We still used gasoline in our vehicles,
solvents to clean the floors.
We understood: absorption

comes through the eyes, the skin.
Ingestion, caused by swallowing.

Steel mills still painted the sunset with pollution.

Constance

2010-06-17T01:34:00.001-04:00

The red and blue lights looked purple
reflected off the wet asphalt. It was a sad
and otherwise cold morning. A sign.

Sirens echoed like nervous laughter from the clouds,
the sound of another failed opportunist ignoring life's lessons.

Reports cited black ice. The car, youthful indecision.
Proof that driving doesn’t erase the past, but simply races past it.

I remember turning to my passenger, the girl,
the one who remains consistent. Small talk turned serious.
Your absence bleeds me dry. A half-witted confession of love.

That Sunday the makeshift pews sat emptier than normal.

On mornings when nobody showed up we’d sit
like uncut pieces of grass, or helpful hands
exhausted from a push mower workout.

We’d sing along or sit sipping coffee from styrofoam cups,
praying the day would end
as abruptly and as beautifully as it began.

The mornings when nobody showed up
I’d whisper, holding her hand:

Even God thinks you look good in a sundress.

TIGER & THE DUCK

2010-06-17T01:29:00.000-04:00

Sixty five questions, a quiz dated 1974,
Is Friendship A Fundamental Part of Love?

I write slowly in pencil I love a woman’s back,
the peach fuzz, the soft spot behind her ear.

With two hundred and six bones aroused,
muscles move tight around the tibia,
the clavicle.

I tell the quiz that waiting rooms hold life together.

Across from me sits a girl, branded pale
with the tan lines of a wedding band.

She gives me that I’m poison and you don’t have to drink it
glare from across the room. I yawn.

I fit my answers neatly into the space provided for me.

My heart sweats like the lime at the bottom of a
doctor's margarita. Time moves slow and I shiver.

ALL THE CONVERSATION IN THIS MOVIE WAS IMPROVISED

2010-06-17T01:22:00.003-04:00

Drink a beer in a top hat. Trust me, you won’t feel any taller. Stand there modestly, sexually aggressive, or proud, like you’ve developed a new sex toy or, perhaps, a way to filibust a kiss. You won’t feel adequate until you find a new hobby in compartmentalizing memories, rearranging names and faces with alternate dreams and places. Remind yourself there’s no difference between getting high off novelty and embracing the novelty of getting high. Neither will offer you relaxation, make you feel tempestuous, give you reason to be boastful or proud. Keep in mind that you won’t want to remember the happiest day of your life. You’ll hate it. It’ll burn your tongue just to speak of it. Your tasteless words will only remind you of the vaudeville days of wrestling, where in hell they call it hell, luchas de apuestas.

ABOUT CLIMAX

2010-01-18T14:12:00.002-05:00

On the way home I met a whore,
the kind who strips while father cuts the turkey,
the kind who excuses herself from the table.
Perfect hair in ten minutes is impossible, the whore tells me,
but that’s plenty for the perfect orgasm.

The whore lets me in on her daily regimen:
Vitamins, a protein shake.
She tells me that fucking is the closest thing
she’s ever experienced to death.

Finer moments, expensive meals, the collapse of a nation.
I’m concerned with nothing but my hand clenching a woman’s neck,
my hand on the whore’s inner thigh.

INTERVIEW.

2010-01-16T14:49:00.003-05:00

I recently did an interview for a friend's blog about my band that just broke up and my most recent project Coasts.

"The Midwest is often looked over in terms of contributions to the music scene. Other than Chicago star players like Rise Against, Fall Out Boy and Alkaline Trio, there is little hype echoing throughout the four-seasoned states. ..."

http://recordtorendered.com/2010/01/05/they-are-coasts/

New Years Eve

2010-01-16T14:40:00.004-05:00

New Years Eve

The older I get the more I hate the holidays. This includes New Years Eve. But I will say, in its defense, somehow this ignorant excuse to drink seems to irritate me less than all other holidays. I find it hard to find anything tangible to grab onto, a reason to celebrate New Years Eve. History aside, there doesn’t seem to be any outright religious or otherwise sacred reason for our current celebration. The closest thing we have to a religious ceremony is a nice wholesome gathering for Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest. Something about that seems empty to me and I don’t think more booze can fill it. Each year I’m left wondering what are celebrating?

On December 31st we gather with a select group of friends, alienate other friends and loved ones by only texting them post the party’s climax, everyone congregates around the assorted party favors and mixers, patiently waiting for the ball to drop. Someone manages to get the room drinking heavily, crude jokes and insulting interpretations on modern dance begin, and everyone enjoys the conclusion to NBC’s New Year’s Eve with Carson Daly - a tradition since 2003. This past Thursday I went home to celebrate the new year and I remember thinking, as I started the empty three hour drive before me, I was going home not just to visit, but out of some sort of obligation to a holiday that I felt detached from.

So what exactly are we are celebrating? The end of one year or the beginning of the next? Are we saying goodbye to our poor habits and proclaiming with bold affirmation that we’re going change our ways because we want to? Or are we really just setting ourselves for failure? The ball drop changes nothing. Collecting New Year’s kisses like some out of work whore proves nothing. A stack of empty jello shots neither defines you as a person, rids you of the previous years sins, nor sets you up for success in the New Year. Instead, it puts you in a nice position for a hangover.

Once a year we all gather round and express our innate desire to party. Void of limitations we leap towards our desires and feed off of one another’s attention to carelessness, then get the idea that we go to sleep, wake up, and suddenly everything is better. I woke up on New Years Day and everything was still shit, just like I left it. I’m just not entirely convinced we all have that much will power, the will power to change overnight. I want to yell “Fools!” at everyone who is wildly optimistic about the New Year. The date you write on your check has little bearing on your happiness. 2010 isn’t an excuse to pretend 2009 didn’t exist, and it doesn’t suddenly make everything better. I know personally. Here it is 2010 and I’m still cleaning up the messes I made in 2009.

But what do I know? I’m the epitome of a scrooge. There is a brighter side to all of this. New Years is significant in the sense that it marks the end. The end of the holidays - the end of the coldest months of the year. Hell, the end of the last decade. Think about how far we have come as people in the last ten years. Ten years ago I was crouched by my computer scared that an American Flag screensaver might be a sign of the end of the world, listening to Will Smith’s “Will 2k”. I suppose this whole bit about celebrating can’t be all bad. After all, what’s wrong with a little hope, a nation wide injection of optimism. But, I still can’t help but feel like we shouldn’t be striding towards a miracle. Instead we should be striving towards realistic change. Don’t forget about last years ups and downs, remember them, just strive to surpass them. Make 2010 a good year, but don’t do it by discrediting the accomplishments of 2009.

The way I look at it is simple, the world is your oyster in 2010. Yes, anything is possible. But the symbolic changing of the calendar year doesn’t wipe your slate clean. You’ve got to pick up where 2009 left off and go from there.

-- Chad Forbregd

Looking for more holiday cheer?

Listen to “A Long December” by the Counting Crows.

Read Charles Bukowski:

“I could see the road ahead of me. I was poor and I was going to stay poor. But I didn’t particularly want money. I didn’t know what I wanted. Yes, I did. I wanted someplace to hide out, someplace where one didn’t have to do anything. The thought of being something didn’t only appall me, it sickened me … To do things, to be part of family picnics, Christmas, the 4th of July, Labor Day, Mother’s Day … was a man born just to endure those things and then die? I would rather be a dishwasher, return alone to a tiny room and drink myself to sleep.”

—Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye, 1982

Still suffering from a hangover? Here’s the best hangover advice that’s been given to me: “Bourbon works as a hangover cure, but only for a while.”

SOME THINGS I KNOW

2009-09-22T00:04:00.003-04:00

A boy engulfed in flames understands,
like a bandit he flees the broken roll cage.

A dirty girl with a British accent moves to Nashville,
a religious town. A welcome sign reads:
Fire From The Lord Burned Among Them.

In church on Sunday she thinks about high school girls
addicted to diet pills and NoDoz. Look how fat I am,
the girl writes next to a doodle depicting obesity.

She writes in the corner of her mothers Bible:
I want to meet someone who has actually lost
their virginity in a candle filled room.

The pastor preaches from the pulpit.
It's all trivial right? A beautiful waste.

Glad to have your company in hell, she thinks.

IN PRINT.

2009-04-29T16:34:00.002-04:00

IUPUI's Genesis came out last night.

I missed the reading, but managed to find a copy by the elevators.

I appreciate your replies, keep writing old friend.

2009-04-22T16:05:00.001-04:00

Somewhere along the line my admiration turned into angst.

YES, MAYBE WE WERE A LITTLE CRAZY

2009-03-09T18:09:00.002-04:00

It’s called folie à deux, not this, not the wine,
but the madness shared by two. They pass love like smoke
trapped in a French kiss. (The boy calls it a shotgun.
A blowback.) Delusional beliefs from another human fulgurite,
a castrato, trussed up like a Christmas ham or a modern day
Matthew Barney. The girl whispers and calls him Kyle,
a soft name, wonders why he keeps his charity a secret,
and quietly prays to be the boy’s Icelandic lover.

ACCEPTED

2009-03-09T15:17:00.001-04:00

I just word a poem has been accepted to IUPUI's Genesis Spring 2009 issue.

The poem is titled "Yes, Maybe We Were A Little Crazy"
an earlier version of this poem is floating around this blog
somewhere or I can post the revised poem on the blog if requested.

I ONLY WISH TO GAZE UPON SOMEONE ELSE'S GRAVE

2009-03-01T22:39:00.000-05:00

What a wonderful feeling to know I did not die alone.

To know there were others watching
the pale light in the west flicker.

I once read the last sign of redemption exists
but it’d take a crew of many to find it.

Drink up, drink up! I’d tell the crew.

*

Ruled more by deceit than by darkness
the Organ Fugue in G Minor
was the last song played on earth.

I TOLD HER “IN CALIFORNIA THEY PLAY ALL HER FAVORITE SONGS.”

2009-02-17T01:33:00.000-05:00

LETHE

2009-01-26T02:27:00.001-05:00

The words of a drunk float at sea.

No better port in the storm, I say.

I paralyze the heart, ship it to Georgia,
reacquaint it with maps, pictures of
California and my face shaved bare.

The captain wakes and replies, I’m leaking.

Mocked by my sequel I return to what I know,
cough drops and clear eyes,
the congested feeling of worry.

The heart sends me a postcard,
it congratulates, hands me the plague,
Here’s to an ugly win, it says.

It becomes too much to coagulate,
to clean up would be easier if we never began,
we must return, start over.

The postcard continues but I stop.

I cough, search out breakfast,
I practice useless words
while the laundry sits,

stains setting in.

Nothing gets washed at sea.

PUBLISHED.

2008-10-24T19:42:00.003-04:00

Black Book Press has taken one of my poems, a rather old poem, that refused to die, Drivel On the Top-40, for their next issue coming out Nov. 1st.

Sadly, I don't recall submitting to them.

PRIOR CONVICTIONS, OR HE’D BE IN A CAR

2008-10-21T03:20:00.000-04:00

Fetish properties are not unlike porn.
-- Nick Hornby

I call her a whore because I’m up late.
At least I’m not him, I say.
I quote Hornby to pass the flu,
rearrange beliefs like construction.

I can feel the ring on my finger,
the emptiness of my cup and
the cold shallow call of the wind.

Time takes us to England,
it takes us through the pages
of the Sunday Times –
it questions distance,
the weight of loneliness.

I have a friend in Chicago
who shares this illness
and the desire to collect
folk art, to converge strangers,

to solve pop songs like a puzzle.

Life becomes this interview
where we define
pop music and sports fiction.
God reading every word,
turning every page –
discovering our confusion.

TOWNS

2008-10-14T03:05:00.000-04:00

It begins with a season; no one knows why it comes.
It never misses a celestial beat, but it takes from us
our happiness – a dry word. Devoid of truth, it replaces
words like hope with a cold, drafty breeze.

You tell me you're working out, going for a bike ride.
Yet I caught a man walking out of my room today,
he laid bare on our 600 count Egyptian bed sheets.
I ate lunch and waited for him to leave.

Across the hall another boy takes
prescriptions from his father,
perception widens extending full frame --
it's nothing new.

After summer Emma went south,
where her heart had always been.

For me, television turned to useless conversation
about college field trips and Nevada brothels.
I spent long hours with a camera swinging
from my neck taking nothing but snapshots.

Little reminders of the towns around me and
the inadequacies that encompassed them.

HOW DOES ONE CONSUME FIRE?

2008-10-13T00:50:00.002-04:00

Consolidate memories during sleep
File away with exact precession
Tranquil dreams and lullabies

Remind yourself daily with notes
Exposure is something we get good at
Like laundry and daydreams
The ability to nod off for long hours

It becomes obvious like cancer
Adolescence never leaves
It hinges itself on forever
Or at least this idea of forever

Death has followed me for six years
He lingers rolling a cigarette
Nothing but bone and air
He shows me a picture of my wife
Rather whom I once prayed to be my wife
She wears white
The ring missing from her finger
The one engraved “With”

PIECES

2008-10-10T00:43:00.001-04:00

You came and went like autumn or spring –

Lips burn like fire
Run like Chariots
It always happens like this
Leaves fall from a tree
To remedy a situation
They rake themselves into a pile
That appears full again
Vibrant and proud

We sink because we can –

The town lost another
One of it’s own today
Like the wet pages of
A novel left by sea

Either way we fall –

Tears freeze in the winter
Disappear in the rain
Or dry in the sun
Either way they shift
From eye to cheek
Just as a pill shifts from bottle to hand
Or how you might
Shift in your seat while reading

Adherence –

I spoke to the dead
Once
They assured me
That even the brave
Regret that final moment
And that yes
It really did rain
When we were apart

MILWAUKEE LIES IN RUINS

2008-10-08T23:06:00.002-04:00

Driving north through the snow
you said you felt played like an organ,
fingers pressing tight against you.

I remember the horizon, the first fog of winter.

I'll never be synonymous with the word love, you said,
turning in your seat, readjusting the shape of your words.

I thought through a hundred metaphors,
searching beneath my seat, fingering about
empty cigarette boxes and loose change.

You smoked menthols then to facilitate the winter.

Days were different, often shorter,
the sun only came out so that it could rain.

I spent long hours in the car listening
to audio books, making reservations,
rearranging false promises.

On the phone there was your voice
a familiar falsetto and the sound
of the road beneath me.

Then the sounds of you asleep on the receiver,
me asleep at the wheel. The smell of
coffee spilling into my lap,

and the bright Chicago sun reminding me
I'm two hours away from home.

A LOVE SONG FOR BOBBY LONG

2008-10-03T01:28:00.003-04:00

Some people reach a place in time where they've gone as far as they can. A place where wives and jobs collide with desire. That which is unknowable and those who remain out of sight. See what it is invisible and you will see what to write. That's how Bobby used to put it. It was the invisible people he wanted to live with. The ones that we walk past everyday, the ones we sometimes become. The ones in books who live only in someones mind's eye. He was a man who was destined to go through life and not around it. A man who was sure the shortest path to Heaven was straight through Hell. But the truth of his handicap lay only in a mind both exalted and crippled by too many stories and the path he chose to become one. Bobby Long's tragic flaw was his romance with all that he saw. And I guess if people want to believe in some form of justice, then Bobby Long got his for a song.

HOW TO DRAW BUILDINGS BASED ON CONCLUSIONS

2008-09-30T15:36:00.002-04:00

Whether we face a bowling ball or a bulldozer, we must answer to survive,
identify objects, locate space, track motion, organize sensations to
answer questions like what is it, how far away is it, where is it going?

We must include kids, cats and Christmas trees in everything we do,
then watch the green blotch, the branches, ornaments and lights
perceived as fuzzy images. Realize, these are all just clues left by a happy child.

Like the stuffed bear with the red-and-white stocking cap, no blood left,
just the trials of youth, drugged and beaten. Or his sister’s breasts,
a fetish for the believer, laid bare, beneath the tree.

Parents pray for a cleansing.
Take away these images of our daughter
unwrapped, hollow and put back into the box.

ACCEPTED

2008-09-22T22:33:00.000-04:00

Thieves Jargon sent me a nice little e-mail today.

DRIVEL ON THE TOP-40

2008-07-30T20:55:00.001-04:00

Some of the worst mistakes of my life have been haircuts. – Jim Morrison

I can no longer hear happy words
of a unfamiliar pop chorus.

Instead, I hear cries, the crashing of ideas,
intermixed and entwined with thought,
sugarless coffee and strong drink.

The mind registers what it needs to hear.

So, you’re happy –

Breakup songs never sounded
so pleasing to the ear.

The Doors on vinyl never sounded so
crisp, clear, conscious and sober.

Morrison, the drunk posing poet, reaches a truth.

So, you’re heartbroken –

Every song written with uncertainty,
melancholy, and pensiveness is
suddenly written about you,

the listener

the selfish

the guilt free.

MOM SAY HE’S BEEN DOING THIS FOR YEARS

2008-07-29T17:33:00.003-04:00

Go ahead Dad,
(I’m calling you that now)
misquote that radio,
replace words like rock or clock for cock.

Jump to conclusions as you limp
over pot holes,
spotting prostitutes,
offering them advice like Adler and Freud,

the divine piston shooting steam.

After all that last piece you gave me did wonders.

Son, that slanty eyed shit aint no good for you.
I've always had a thing for orientals though.

A drink or two later you told me
Even a fat guy looks good with a tan.

Ah, fuck yeah. The lady behind the bar said.
See Dad, the bartender agreed.

She was squeezing you for a tip,
don’t worry we’ve been down this road,

you gave in,
you always give in,

nothing another coat of white primer can’t fix.

CHASING EDIE LIKE A WILD BOAR

2008-07-20T17:23:00.001-04:00

There’s something nice about picking the same person
over and over again to play “break-up,”
like how you once played house. Or later,
doctor, taking turns exploring
the human reproductive organs.

So there’s this girl. I tell my brother over lunch.
Her name is Edie and she keeps finding me,
serendipitous in nature.

I remember his fries looked cold,
dipping their feet into the ketchup,
testing the waters, tip-toeing around
salt and cheap seasoning.

Like a stalker?

Yeah, I thought.
Like a stalker.

YES, MAYBE WE WERE A LITTLE CRAZY

2008-07-19T19:41:00.000-04:00

It’s called folie à deux, not this, not the wine, but
the madness shared by two. We pass love like smoke
trapped in a French kiss. (The boy calls it a shotgun.)
A blowback. Delusional beliefs from another human fulgurite,
a castrato, trussed up like a Christmas ham or a modern day
Matthew Barney. The girl whispers and calls him Kyle,
a soft name, wonders why he keeps his charity a secret
and quietly prays to be the boy’s Icelandic lover.

I CRACKED MY FIRST BEER AT 5AM

2008-07-08T10:57:00.001-04:00

I watched a scene develop below me.

For a moment the men turned
black and white –

a flash of Hitchcock.

Suspense is like a woman.
Well that’s what he said, right?

They paused, I paused
still watching,

a god’s pause,
long and mythical.

Perched on the balcony, laughing,
I spat, shaking my fist,
making a cameo in my own film.

If they do something drastic
I might end up having these clothes
on in the morning,

crazy, I know,
loco as the Spanish say,
running a feverish pace

through the night, escaping,

still drunk
with understanding,
still awake
with power.

And did he cut ‘em? Asked the waiter,
returning to my table,
Nah, and I took another pull from my beer.

2008-06-15T03:35:00.000-04:00

HUGGERMUGGER

1.

In the ghostly swim room
a girl pats her face.
She begs for her glasses.

Where are my eyes?
Where are my eyeballs?
Imma die without ‘em.

2.

There is a ghost
known as the drunken ghost.
He lost and forgot his keys.

He paints a mural on the wall
between the bar and the dining room.
In what he knows as the dining room.

3.

At night he borrows the girl.
They binge, hang on one another.
Try to love, but their love is transparent.

4.

Once, while I was visiting on business,
(or at least I wrote it off as business)
I met a woman who faked a pregnancy.

The birth and the bump.
She explained her actions as
the next natural step after faking the orgasm.

IGLOOS IN INDIANA

2008-06-15T03:17:00.002-04:00

The boy huddles in, keeps warm beneath the covers,
his coat and ironed dress pants lay at the foot of his bed
(also keeping him warm).

The boy reserves moments like these for nights like this
when the winter bullies the windows, calls them names,
threatens to crack them, tells them they are useless.

And pants like the ones at the foot of his bed
for days like tomorrow, like Christmas, but not Christmas,
just another day – another twenty second or

twenty third of December. Like Christmas, but not.
The family will come together without Christ and drink,
drink a sour liquid that smells of the end of harvest.

------Before bed the father explained to the boy,
------You see, and then he paused and had a sip,
------You drink milk and it helps you sleep.

------The father had another and another and soon
------his face was numb, but it didn’t mask his guilt.
------I drink Whiskey because it helps me unwind.

The heat kicks on in the distance,
for a moment there was only the hum of air,
the silence of condensation,

the contemplation of the mother at the table,
the flicker of cleavage on the TV, and the boy
holstering himself. Sweaty with age, he knows

that the remote is only an extension of the hand,
the batteries an extension of the remote,
and that one day he will be old and watch TV to pass time.

One day he will stay up late and piss off the alarm clock –

hitting the snooze
hitting the snooze

nurse that hangover
until Christmas is over.

INFESTION: A MADE UP WORD

2008-06-15T02:47:00.001-04:00

My concern thus far, as you may already know,
is the long term affects of the cliché.

The intended effect of this poem is to debunk
my own theories and ideas.

Many, many Mays ago. Long before I heard about Aunt May,
or International Worker’s Day, which is held

on May Day (which is May 1st) and I’d say
a good three or four full moons after I first heard Maggie May

I wrote an essay that questioned this very basic idea,
Do the good really die young?

My thesis, main bullets, introduction and conclusion
were loosely connected to Billy Joel’s Only the Good Die Young.

Which if I recall correctly I referred to as the second or third
greatest song of someone else’s lifetime.

Looking back I am filled with apathy and empathy and maybe
a little bit of sympathy for arriving at such a conclusion based on so little facts.

So if you’ll allow me to revise my closing arguments I will say this:
Sometimes the good do die young.

Though in many cases those sons-a-bitches live on forever,

making the poor folk and the criminal folk and the above average
lazy folk feel worthless for doing so little.

IF I STAY LONG AND EAT LIGHT I’LL TIP DOUBLE

2008-05-30T23:41:00.001-04:00

for MM

The coffee ran out
So did the ice water
I stayed long, ate light,

I tipped double

When everyone is sleeping
This town is just as lonely
As a hundred others

Room and board
Vacancy
The sound of the open wind

Thank you for the coffee, I say

I leave

She is the last one
At the counter
Finally resting her feet

THE TOUR WAS OVER, WE’D SURVIVED

2008-05-23T10:04:00.003-04:00

I’ve been following you.

Today you’re in Albany, Georgia
standing among the stained glass windows,
overlooking the wooden pews.

Keep your hand out of the offering, I whisper.

Eight hours away from where King was shot.
Eight hours away from where The King
died on the shitter.

(Or so I’ve heard

Unable to get out bed,
the tour was cancelled.

Later the news read –

Fourteen drugs in Elvis’ system,
ten in significant quantity.)

Isn’t everyone just a junkie?

Sometimes in the presence of others,
or in the woods, I piss towards the wind.
Parade, flash nature, gloat,

and think about how memoirs begin –

The Story of
The Life and Times of
The Song of
The Diary of

All good stories
begin with a good title
and closing line.

Phish fans crisscross the country,
No one asks them to stay.

HONEST ANSWERS, SWEET HELLOS

2008-05-19T09:56:00.001-04:00

I’m sober as an ox. Well,
sober as an ox that’s had a beer or two.

You can see the morning air
three stories up
stop and rest on the trees.

In the light a girl shifts into a shadow,
resting easy to the pat, pat, pat,
of the boy’s chest,

pounding against his shirt buttons.
His legs ache, but not his heart,
as she sinks into his lap.

Through the screen door –

You see we’re on a balcony –
I must have forgotten to mention
the details of the evening.

Posed in the shadows of the living room,
wine passes from hand to hand and spills,
guilty as communion.

I can’t see your facial features
when you look like Jesus.

A guest or friend of a friend
or whatever - leaves.
Pockets full of cigarette wrappers,

soaps and assorted candies.

You can’t save the dinosaurs,
save some shit instead.

Later, someone claimed the guest
stole their right to piss outside.
But the boy and the girl in the patio chair,

and the man gargling whiskey in the kitchen,

they are all a part of this world
and for tonight they have all shared
in the slip of its logic.

IN ROUTE TO WALLACE

2008-04-30T12:27:00.003-04:00

A carnival de-rooted and thrust from the cement, everything exposed. Wires and pieces of steel hung from the bottom of the carousel, fell out like organs, or at least there was the sound of an organ – hissing in the distance, the slow, solitary, hum of existence. Two horses crashed together, chipped paint on chipped paint, broken heads smiling. They looked as though they were kissing, a married couple, somewhat unnatural, puckering lips, like the couple I read about in a magazine. They held a kiss so long their faces suctioned together and the resistance threatened to tug out their God Fearing guts.

ARGUS

2008-04-30T12:08:00.003-04:00

..............for D.B.

He sat back for a moment and let out a sigh.

On the road he mistook a stop sign for a savior,
but not Christ – one he didn’t believe in.

Noosed around his rearview mirror was a single
black bandanna and a photograph torn and taped
neatly together shoved into the left side of the dash.

He thought for a moment about how his body
had been haunted for three days, tucked in
and turned inside out.

What kind of man would that make you? He remembered being asked.
Perhaps, he replied, one that had fallen
out of a misspelled version of heaven.

FROM HERE WE COULD GO JUST ABOUT ANYWHERE

2008-04-30T12:07:00.002-04:00

1. HEADLIGHTS

I told the photographer to hold still,
think of himself as a tripod,
then become one.

A woman applied make-up in the corner.
I wanted her to stop, rush over and uncover.
I want the wrinkles… the fine lines.

Even the Ancient Egyptians wore eyeliner, she said.
A simple black line
wrapping around her eyes -- hiding themselves.

2.GUITAR

The stainless steel ring clicks against
the back of the neck – his finger drags
against the only string left strung

and it stings… the music
or at least this idea of the Father
whom the boy had once so proudly played for.

3.INSOMINA

On the porch I told them I could see God.
I told them how he crashed down
through the sun and became a cat named Butthead.

Then I told them about how moments ago
the fiery orange cat came over and rested –
first the paws on my chest and then

God’s giant cat-like head rested.

A POEM ABOUT MEN CACKLING LIKE MAD

2008-04-30T12:07:00.001-04:00

When I say they were talking gibberish
I really mean to say that the gibberish
was starting to sound like talk.

The two of them looked to be polar opposites,
only their beards reflecting back an image of themselves.
Sitting only a table’s distance away

I felt the girth of their conversation grow, their heartstrings drawn tighter.

Outside the weather was wet with a
slight chance of disappointment.
and an all time low of inadequate failure.

In high school we took images with a
pinhole camera, began beard one to beard two,
outside on a bench with the container in front of us,

I held her hand and after a few minutes we slowly
started to move apart – the image appeared ghostly.
Dektol burned my fingers.

Another time we watched movies
in the back of an old barn, film projector rolling.
And I don’t mean to say that this shaped us,

had any real impact of our lives, but it gave us something
to say in passing or in our letters – it gave us a reason to
grow distant.

NATIONAL POETRY MONTH

2008-04-30T12:05:00.001-04:00

She was kissing the top of the spoon,
complementing the fine shape
of the bow I’d selected for sugar.

She eased the spoon closer
and closer to her tonsils,
gagging on the engraved handle.

Are you sure you don’t want a lick?
She said with the kind certainty
that you can only be uncertain of.

Her mouth looked like an old,
whored out barstool, wobbling,
and unkempt, sugar and flour

sticking to the side – a stick
of butter forgotten on the roof
of her mouth.

Actually, I’ll pass, I said
in the distance – easing my way from
her stationed lean-to in the kitchen.

No, no, I’m not about to, I thought.
I’m not about to taste another damn word
of her ignorance.

SOMETHING, A HOLIDAY

2008-04-24T12:58:00.001-04:00

(a Dane Blue erasure poem)

Never informed of my birth
it isn’t the cheap whiskey
that I am not fit

to obey

for the same reason
credit cannot be given to the sun
the mice streak out of burners

some thanks, however,
to the friend awake at 3pm

do you have somewhere to be?
I ask him, you know,
it’s a holiday

eyes focused

grumbling something
the crease of his elbow
bumps through the porch

beyond this has never been.

WHITEWASH

2008-04-24T11:24:00.001-04:00

1.

Coca-Cola rusts in my mouth as
I leave the Carolina blue exam room walls,

stepping into the muck of Tuesday afternoon.

It’s late summer, maybe August.

I’m going to fill my prescription in less than an hour.
I’ll be back to work with or without the doctor’s note.

I make conversation with strangers and
offer to lend my jacket to a lady

who appears to be dying for shade.
All this on the way to my car.

Later, I told the pharmacist-
It’s like drinking a black crayon in hot water.

She sensed I was something moonstruck,
dripping with intolerance, looking to get up

on cough syrup, to drive overnight
from Bakersfield to Bremerton.

She weighed my words with her eyes,
pricing them by the pound,

setting them on the shelf to be reviewed later.

She picked up the seashell receiver of
the pharmacy phone and dialed

a number I couldn’t decipher.

2.

A magazine on the table described
the broken window as a pane leaking glass,
a comical story about an allergic reaction to alcohol.

Columns and columns of ads lay scattered
around me like mouse traps – a little more cheese
and I might bite.

3.

Tonight –

I’m eating a TV dinner
of Branston Brown Sauce and pills.

4.

Everything done is just occupying time,
I think, a process.

I take one capsule by mouth
three times daily, more if needed.

My words sent out on a platter,

cheap and tough as a microwaved steak.

The night carries on like this –
The silhouette of a bottle,

an ordinary orange bottle,
resting on it’s side.

RIVERSIDE, IT’S TIME TO SAY, “GOODBYE”

2008-04-04T10:10:00.004-04:00

We watched tornados from the garage
in the fall, or flew paper airplanes
off the roof in the summer,

yeah, I guess, I said this is living.

Once we jammed pennies in an orange,
stuck them on our tongue
and waited to feel different.

Whiteouts in the winter,
getting lost between houses or
walking through cornfields –

either way we got cut.

And then, as I remember there was a girl,
shapely and young – the faint smell of
someone’s youth being filtered through bong water.

One of us wore your father’s cologne,
the other learned to smoke,
lighting the father’s cigarettes with a broken match.

The years passed this way, lingering about

like tiny flesh-colored clouds – each day
I’m a little older, the voice of my youth –
a little younger.

---

it'll come along eventually... it's getting there thanks to the writers
workshop... damn good group of writers...

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE SUMMER?

2008-03-31T12:55:00.004-04:00

0000000000000(a rebuttal)

I remember – you were in California,
your voice trailed off from a train station payphone
and died with silent desperation, a final plea,
a final fuck-you. You knew I’d hang up
or never answer at all.

Salvia on the beach, a hundred dollar bill
placed carefully beneath a pint glass.
Keep ‘em commin’ barkeep.

In Sarasota I heard a story
about Turtle Island. It was haunted,
men crushing the skulls of the living.
In the foreground children walk to school,
they pause to stare back at the sands of the coast.

Maybe you were in Canada, but I can be certain
that I was on a rock slab cursing the origins of
It’s better to have loved than lost.

Maybe you were in New Orleans,
but I was at home, my body submerged
beneath cold bathwater.
Tracing cursive letters on the side of a frosty beer mug.
(I was trying to remember how she wrote.)

Maybe you were in the Carolinas falling in love
or making a blanket fort with strangers.
I was three miles west of the place I was born
trying to convince myself
that I had loved her adequately.

I planned on leaving, being creative or
reading with my feet buried in sand.
Instead I wrote another sexless poem
about beer and cigarettes, another
damn poem about lost love to file away.

Found Text.

2008-03-18T10:54:00.001-04:00

Alright all of you trendy trendsters… here is a lesson on found text for the TEXT MESSAGE GENERATION. Everybody get your phones out and read the last five sent or received texts (this works better when you have multiple messages from multiple people) and then write them out and post them. Chances are the sentences will already be broken and the lines/stanzas will create effortlessly… it becomes sort of a broken narrative of your day.

A Fish Out of Water

Did you wear green?

Would you like a welcome to
Flood City present?

Package in transit sir,
three – five days.

The rats of March nibble
At the face of monkey men.

Goodnight, love you.

PREFACE.

2008-03-05T19:26:00.000-05:00

David Dodd Lee and IUSB's Thriving Band of Writers
by chad forbregd

Go ahead – press your ear to the door or open it just a crack, peek inside DW 1275 on a Monday or Wednesday night and you'll likely find a small gathering of students sipping away at coffee or a diet soda, fighting sleep deprivation and hunger, with one common question in mind... How the hell do we become writers? Take it all in for a moment – there's Professor David Dodd Lee, the writer, leaning back in his seat, pushing at his glasses or pulling them from his hair. He'll probably be chuckling, or speaking about the abstract, or explaining how the poem was erotic as hell. Who better to guide students in an open discussion on eroticism in a poem or the tone and how it relates to the world (he might ask, what is the emotional response to this? or, how does the poem become a shape of an experience)? Who better than this grizzled (and at times disheveled) veteran of the cold steel pen?

There are several reactions to David Dodd Lee's class room setup and style. Some students find it disorganized – they want Lee to spill every connection from the page to their ear, everything from syntax to voice, and from grammar to style. They want answers. Other students lose themselves in the classroom – they find it to be one of the most creative and invigorating spaces they've experienced. One student, Charmi Keranen, is one of those inspired by the class. "David infuses his students with a passion for writing that doesn't die after the class is over. The writing passion remains and searches for ways to grow and thrive." Indeed, there are others of the same opinion, as an entire writer's community has grown out of Lee's classes, meeting weekly in coffee shops, bars, even in student homes, rooted in the inspiration of their passionate professor.

David Dodd Lee was originally hired to teach only fiction classes, but has expanded to teach Advanced Poetry 303/513, along with courses in other disciplines. Lee describes his education as being "between a degree in Art History and Painting and an MFA in creative writing." Lee has also worked as a park ranger, a fishery technician, and a journalist (with work ranging from art and film reviews, to publishing copy and book descriptions in catalogues). He even worked in several hospitals during the 80s. As the eclectic Lee describes, he often would "take a semester off and write in a park barn." Currently, Lee is the editor of the annual poetry and fiction anthology, Shade, published by Four Way Books. He is also the publisher of Half Moon Bay poetry chapbooks, which include titles by Franz Wright, Hugh Seidman, and Pamela Kircher. Previously he served as Poetry Editor at Third Coast, and Passages North. Despite his varied past, it is obvious just talking to Lee that his true passion is poetry.
When Lee began writing in the 80s he wrote mostly stories. "At some point" Lee describes, he "switched to poetry" and began reading anything he could get his hands on. "Mostly what I did was read book after book after book after book, from Flaubert to Hubert Selby Jr., from Keats to Robert Hauss." Lee found his mentors in books, metoring such poets as Louise Gluck, Charles Wright, Denis Johnson and Mark Halliday, Lee began writing and developed the philosophy that "active reading feeds the beast – the beast being writing." This is his fundamental belief and the way his class is structured, putting emphasis on two key points, always be reading and always be writing.

Now the author of five books (including the forthcoming Automatic Thank-You Kisses to be published by Four Way Books in 2009), Lee's published output is prolific, appearing in everything from the Marlboro Review, Laurel Review, Prairie Schooner, Hayden's Ferry Review, to the Sou'wester, and Controlled Burn, to name just a few. Not to mention, he has three finished poetry manuscripts, a book of short stories, and a novel, Flood sitting on the shelf. He wants to write twenty books in the next five years, and when Lee is not working to make that goal a reality, he enjoys teaching here at I.U.S.B. Why? Lee explains that it's because of the students, who are "life weary and experienced in the hard ways of things, people with jobs, etc. It makes for colorful writing, and there is a lot of passion in the student/teach exchange." Is it safe to say that Lee believes life influences writing? Absolutely. "Your life is the only thing that is wholly yours, as well as the imagination that comes with it. But it's the imagination that's the muscle that must be developed."

In David Dodd Lee's short time here at I.U.S.B. the English Department has seen a huge increase in creative writing students publishing work in literary magazines and online. To name just a few, Charmi Keranen, Talia Reed, and Neil Kelly have all been published within the last year. Student Neil Kelly, in between sips of beer speculates on why: "When I think about David and his influence on the writing program I immediately think Indiana University instead of I.U.S.B. Not to mention that something like five or six of his students have been published. That's probably three or four more than I.U.S.B. has ever had in its existence." As a professor, David Dodd Lee serves as a mentor of the craft, inspiring and energizing students to write. "I tend to share everything that happens in that part of my life (writing/publishing) – whether through direct communication or through the blog" says Lee. It is that sort of openness, and his love of the written word, that makes Lee a constant inspiration to his students, and a man most certainly worth getting to know.

If you are interested in following David Dodd Lee's writing, he hosts several blogs which can be found at:
http://www.seventeenfingeredpoetrybird.blogspot.com/ (personal)
http://molestingtheclover.blogspot.com/ (a blog dedicated to his A190 course.)

FREE PRINTABLE GREETINGS

2008-02-08T00:04:00.000-05:00

A week before Valentines Day 2006

1.

The television is my new fixation,
Background noise and drinking game.
The girl says: It was just your basic mixture
of rum, coke and roofies.

(I wonder if she tastes like a marshmallow.)

I held someone’s spit in my mouth-
Let it ferment, break down into compounds
And drank it back like a cheap shot.
(Poured over ice from the well.)

She used youth like it was verb.
Her feet against the cold wall,
The noise of tiny tip toeing across
Layers of thick paint,

It got me thinking about your apartment.

2.

Thirty (or was it forty) hours a week
Working two jobs – (I'm making my own schedule.)
Anything to keep me from munching
A hand full of painkillers, shoving a speeder up each nostril
And getting behind the wheel with whiskey in my lap,
(and whiskey on my breath.)

3.

Do you remember what I said?
(I said fuck it – I do want a Valentine.)

Three girls rejected me yesterday.

4.

Anything or anyone –
Please cut me out a heart,

Let me smell the headache of brush on glue
And cut myself feeling the trail of torn edges

Left by safety scissors.

Oh and
if you have the time

Please write your own rendition of
Roses are red,

And leave it in my mail box or
Under my windshield wiper.

Most Days She Didn’t Wear Makeup

2008-01-31T22:45:00.001-05:00

We didn’t need a reason to love,
To press our fingers against exposed flesh,

Like we were sixteen.
We smoked cigarettes like virgins,

Puckering our lips in the shape of a kiss-
Exhaling cloudless puffs of air.

Tracing lines between blemishes on each others bodies,
I told her stories. We held hands under the ill-lit

Night and compared length. Her fingers were long-
Painted black like the sky. I told her all my fingers

Had been broken at least once,
She giggled at the possibilities that had that been true

I might not be able to touch her.

Instead of Getting Healthy, Just Pretend.

2008-01-31T22:42:00.000-05:00

White coats feed me white tabs,
And take swabs of spit in between strong doses.

The taste of Coca-Cola rusts in my mouth as
I leave exam room walls and try to fill my

Prescription in less than an hour.

I told the pharmacist-
It’s like drinking a black crayon in hot water.

She took me for a crazy,
Looking to get liquored up on cold medicine

And drive overnight
From Bakersfield to Bremerton.

She weighed my words with her eyes and
Disappeared with my driver’s license.

A magazine on the table described
A broken window as the pane leaking glass.

Another offered a comical story
About an allergic reaction to alcohol.

The author broke out in handcuffs covered with pigs.

***

I found this old little gem somewhere in my files.
I'm not sure when I wrote it- but I remember stopping
because I wasn't sure where it wanted to lead me.
I've played around with omitting words and making it
more vague and choppy. Any suggestions for harsh
cuts or edits? I'd love the feedback. :)

5:20 A.M.

2008-01-29T19:46:00.000-05:00

A cold kitchen heated by a stove.

With smoke in your breath
You pour milk slowly,
Not to disturb the taste.

You sit with coffee,
Drinking from the same cracked mug,
Unwashed and old.

Yeah, the one that says,
I love Sunday School.
(But even God couldn’t sweeten this cup.)

The morning news reads like a joke-
Flocks of homeless men circle a bridge in Elks Grove,
And join together singing in one sad chorus.

(Homeless are we, just as homeless as homeless can be.)

Strippers get paid in fake money while a
Ninety-three year old man gets caught
Dealing drugs somewhere in the heart Oklahoma.

Your morning eggs don’t taste the same
With smut on the tip of your tongue.
(So you save them to microwave later.)

You let your finger drop and swirl
Drawing pictures with the butter
Around and around in the syrup…

A link leaps to the floor.

(It just sits there.)

Dog food, you say, setting the newspaper down.