Heirloom winter

Maggie sits beside me, her
eyes reflecting leaves. I ask
why summer Sundays are all
sleeping through themselves.

Homecoming

The seat and my ass are like two people at a party who are trying to avoid one another, but my feet stick to the bottom of my boots like stones too big to carry. Middle aged men sit on either side of me. They are so close that the heat from their bodies condenses on my skin. I am a lozenge stuck in the corner seam of an old woman's handbag. One row back, a tongue bends like a swimmer's toes and the voice of a woman pushes off of her teeth, slides through a straw into the air and then dips into the pool of my patience.

"They better get this thing started. Like I said, if I don't get these books signed..."

The house is full of her sentiment, her type. Graying hair tufts atop their white heads. They are liberally-educated. They are shirt-tucked and socially-secured. They clap Democratic. The books in their bags have too much white space.

Morning on the BBC

I snapped the belt like laughing Venus,
(a mind was in the window watching),
the humming table eyed the bed where
we pretended to be sleeping.

Carousel Horse

"Who puts a Carousel horse on top of a silo?"

This is what I was thinking to myself when he showed up. My torso was draped over the stone bridge like a wet swimsuit, and his voice was like trying to put a wet swimsuit on a dry body. To my left, a black woman dressed in a beige pant suit dove into the still water beneath the bridge.

"Well, look at you," he chirped. He was English.

"I was just remembering my childhood. I grew up in a place like this."

This of course, must have been bullshit. There is no place like this, and I certainly did not grow up there. The building was a bastard of architecture - something between a farmhouse and a church. The lawn was standing water. Gardens were replaced by a rotting collection of tombstones, and at the top of the field a small grain silo cast a corrugated shadow on the water. With a crumbling red roof, the silo resembled an antique sugar container, and the garish Carousel horse affixed to the top looked like a night of heavy drinking.

"Ahhh. You're American. What is your name?"

"Maria."

"You're not going back to America, are you?"

He had long hair. He wore a green shirt with the suggestion of a pattern, khaki shorts and a fanny pack grayed by damp currency and cigarette butts he'd forgotten to throw away.

"Yes, soon. I have no reason to stay here. I was just here visiting my boyfriend, but we spent the better part of my visit breaking up. So, now I'll just go home and find a job. Do that thing, you know?"

"Ohhh, Maria."

Like a strange bird, he put his arm around me and I could smell his greasy cologne. It was obvious that he was in love with me already.

"Oh, Maria. Maria. Maria. Maria. You have to stop living in adjectives."

I looked at the Carousel horse, who, had it been alive, would really be living in adjectives. I envied the horse. I envied the black woman in the beige suit who lived in verbs. I envied this strange man who lived in superlatives. I lived in misplaced punctuation.

The man and his bird arm came closer. I listened as things passed on the road behind us. Dogs, wheels of bicycles, the tips of canes carried by humans, leaves and lost swimsuits that had dried up on windowsills and blown away from their assigned bodies.

The Ghost of Aristotle

The three legged dog stopped to
inspect the beer bottle corpse
arranged on the sidewalk like
a stained glass spill.

He seemed to regard it
with ancient pity.