Jazz Artist // Summer Monster

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A boy sits playing at the piano, his dark eyes searching for something in the keys.1.

a crossword puzzle undoes itself
mirrors look back and
judge with the sharpness
of unpolished rock
she looks onward
and dries her hair
with the newspaper, expelling
facts onto the bleeding page

2.

a glass of tea
and its ice are oases
on the tongue
and a slow honeycomb drips
tufts of amber rum
while
she advances slowly, thrusting her
wigwam hips and pushing up her pin-
up breasts in the heat
an opera cascades from a window

3.

we roll exposed, leaving behind
silver blades, like knives
lifting our moans from the grass
littering and deflowering
the suburban air

4.

the summer monster advances
toward the bike-riding children
and tears the innocence from
their freckled limbs in delight

First Night at Somerset Apartments

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Bird on a Wire

TW: prostitution, sex involving a minor

As the door clicks shut, I am spitting the chewed remains of a stick of gum from my mouth onto the grass, an attempt to purge all my emotions in the mangled wad. There is a body still breathing heavily behind the door, in the dense and stagnant air of the apartment. The body still damp with sweat—I can see it, feel it, even now, as I walk to my car.

I counted the numbers on the doors all the way to forty while savoring the taste of fresh peppermint gum. This was all too new. Breathe. A line of four dark windows stood between apartment forty and forty-four. As I walked past two of the black windows, I heard the door click open ahead of me, as if whoever was there was waiting, watching through the thin curtains. The screen bobbled for a moment, indecisive. I walked past, acted casual. It opened wider and I reached for the knob. A dark hand pulled the storm door open and I stepped over the threshold like it was supposed to happen naturally.

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The Sunken Place

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In our bible there is a beginning, one borne from cosmic nothingness—a testament to human creation from the thrusts and dreams of our ancestors. The creation myth we all experience. I remember my birth. It’s here somewhere, swimming around in all this.

How I miss the darkness of before, when we were all noiseless, peaceful things. Free of worry and fingerprints and wrath, protected and fed inside the cocoon of our one, real god.