WE EXPLORERS, WE. I ADVENTURER, I.

LEWIS AND CLARK ABANDON THE MISSISSIPPI FOR SALT CREEK, COOK COUNTY, ILLINOIS
A creek runs through town.
Through the back alleys and yards,
past factories and nestled between
a line of trees on either bank.
The rickety chain-link fences have gaps
throughout and the water is not hard to reach.
Laces are untied and shoes kicked aside
as trousers are rolled and the water trickles between toes
We looked into murky water searching for fish or turtles
and found typewriters and shopping carts.
To us, the river went on for miles and miles,
southward toward the Gulf where there was a sea waiting for us.
We would brave it one day, we said.
When the rain came drowning out our parents' screams
and the waters rose enough to keep the bottom of even
the most ramshackle boat from scraping against the
muddy basin we felt sure would soon be sand.
We never left, though.
The water would sink back down to its familiar shallows
and our parents' voices would return to whispers.
But we knew it was there and it comforted us.
There was always time.

ODE TO MY FEET
My feet are an earthy tan that the rest of my legs will never know. Hints of pale where straps and shoes and cuts once were mottle the color. There is a fading scar on the top of my left foot where a well intentioned suitcase scraped across it as I ran for the will-be-departing-any-second train I needed to catch. The scar is coupled with broken nails, bumps, and bruises. The pads on both feet are calloused and the skin struggles to adjust to its newly acquired toughness.

The shoes I'd meant for walking begin to show signs of life as the first cracks in the rubber appear.
Holes are worn in the soles and the tread has long since vanished.

These feet have earned their markings. They move forward, always forward, through labyrinthine cobblestone corridors and up the now familiar gothic spiral. They walk until they are raw and blistered. They walk until they bleed. They bled and their skin cracked and yet they carried me all the while so that I might know what the earth was made of or perhaps what I was made of. Sacrificed in some degree and now memorialized for they are here for me as living proof. Proof that whispers to me: You have made the most of this.

"Extras" in Autumn

When I walk by the house where you no longer live
I am reminded of the sound of Ricky Gervais's laugh
mingled with both yours and mine
and the color of your skin
lit by the television
while you sleep.

Love Theme: Reprise

AND ALL
Where's my coat
No not
AT ONCE
yet. Tell me
what's wrong
I KNEW
Nothing
I KNEW
Nothing's ever
AT ONCE
wrong. Do you
love me?
I KNEW
Yes yes yes
HE
Tell me
NEEDED
...
ME.
Good-night.

Breadbaker

It is Sunday morning and
my father is up early baking bread
His strong rough hands delving into dough,
kneading it with careful and quiet deliberation
The house is empty allowing a silence to settle
as I, small and determined,
have again lost the debate over
the necessity of Sunday's service

But my father's dark and heavy hands knead dough
in the kitchen in his own ritual.

Early morning light filters in
as the terra cotta bowl allows the dough to
rise over its lips
and my father sips coffee from a mug
once belonging to some ancient hotel room
and that is just as heavy as his hands,
as impenetrable

I return,
one hand in my mother's,
the other already tugging at the lace of my Sunday best,
and find my home smells of a warmth
and a comfortable familiarity that I am too young to articulate

...

My father still sits cast in steel at the kitchen table
sipping coffee from his stalwart mug
but my Sundays home are rare,
and I am too old to believe in redemption from weekly masquerades

And my father's hands,
leaden and weary in tireless domestic rest,
no longer bake bread.

A Book Review for Eeeee Eee Eeee by Tao Lin Found On Amazon.com

In a darkened room in a small and filthy apartment
that sits invisibly above an office of little significance
Tao Lin's intern is about to write a book review for Tao Lin's latest book.

It is 3am and
lit only by the gentle and luminous glow
of the computer at which he sits,
Tao Lin's intern begins to type.

Words come slowly and with great difficulty,
but they come.
They come honestly and simply
and free of the pretension of capitalization
and the presumptuous brusqueness
usually incited by virtual anonymity.

i feel confused. i think i am 'having fun.'

Then, without much thought or reticence,
a fortune cookie truth drops from his fingertips
and Tao Lin's intern falls asleep
wondering only how to pronounce a title he hears as a screech.

it is hard to write a book review without using cliches

[work in progress, comments appreciated]

The overbearing hum of a million in love
signal the start of a summer I won’t feel
Born out of earth, memory, time
Crawling out of the back of my mind,
out of the tightly sealed boxes I’d placed them in

In days they are floating drunkenly in the sky
golden black moments of repression unleashed and
filtering through the sunlight in

assumed warmth with
assumed breezes

My footsteps shrink and I contemplate insurmountable
distances once crossed in a mindlessness not unlike
the stupor that surrounds me.

Ritual dances performed with a lewd audacity
and vulgar proclamation
only to have it all culminate with the smell of
putrid meat
and
years of waste and memory
in the rotting humidity
Dozens of small bodies writhing in streets and gutters
and still I am fixed behind panes of glass

Until silence, falling leadenly, allows a breath to escape and for two words to be realized:
Soon
Autumn.

By the Way

With the icebox plums long gone,
along with my mother's vase,
which we never agreed on

This is just to say
that I have left

Forgive me,
you are impossible
so bitter
and so cold