Juice Read online

  who spread your uncle’s ashes

  over our desert crater. Didn’t you

  want to add The Sun about now?

  Watch page by page so much thought

  on our world go up in smoke?

  You know this very moment

  hundreds in Samoa and the Congo

  are roasting supper on a stick

  while hungry thousands abide outside

  the stone circle. And countless

  homeless here at home are rubbing

  hands together over flames

  as if mere hands

  were keeping flames going.

  Battle Grounds

  Never really geared up

  before. Sure, I’ve gotten

  dressed in the morning

  to go to the office.

  On Saturdays I’ve put on

  sweats and old shoes

  to clean out the garage. So,

  how’s everything look?

  Helmet on straight?

  Bayonet shiny bright?

  Canteen squared away

  in its little green holster?

  Let’s go reconnoiter.

  Let’s stick it to ’em.

  Let’s draw some blood

  and when we’re done

  redefining the topiary,

  let’s cut a new hole

  through the arbor

  where a boxwood

  can just be a boxwood.

  Local Report

  By the time the news team got there,

  it was way too late.

  The fire company’s biggest hook and ladder

  was in full extension, its longest hose

  aimed vainly at the going-down sun.

  Then the moon showed up

  and called the firemen home

  to their wives and girlfriends.

  Up next, sports,

  followed by the weather.

  Three

  Moves

  I kid myself in thinking I am

  ten again with Timmy on maneuvers.

  We survive on penny candy,

  tales we twist into the rugs of b’ars

  we kill as Davy Crocketts.

  Only stars of major

  constellations look in on us asleep.

  The arms of leaves, pup tent

  we have pitched are all we need

  to shed what rain will crowd

  throughout the night and move us

  ever closer. Morning glares,

  its hatchet falls and splits us

  into fire builder/water hauler

  roles that burdened us from birth.

  His hands would grow out

  into mauls, mine into ropes.

  Right now he’s bleeding

  like a just-stuck pig in ketchup

  and molasses at my birthday

  barbecue, rotating flats of ribs

  and heaving me a beer. I catch it

  even though I do not drink. It is a move

  I see he understands as he is sparked

  into remembering a touch inside

  a sleeping bag. A touch he now

  exchanges with his wife who comes

  out from the kitchen with potatoes

  and my partner who could use a beer.

  Ribs burst into flames!

  Charcoal must have touched

  the lighter fluid. Timmy instantly

  recalls the night we almost

  set the deepest woods on fire.

  This conflagration on the patio

  will take more than a pissing to put out.

  Juice

  It takes juice to make

  a night like this. It’s like

  everything that’s anything

  takes juice. Take cotton candy.

  Prize fish in bowls and

  paper leis. Pancake

  on the barker’s cheeks, his stack

  of muscles.

  I give my last nickel

  to ride the Ferris Wheel

  and rise in stages, backwards,

  rocking. Stopped at the top,

  it’s like I left my body down

  below, bent double. My arms,

  tight around my knees,

  each other.

  Puke in the sawdust has juice in it.

  His hand is steady on my back.

  His voice in its advanced state of change

  assures me I will live. His breath

  is like the sweetest juice I remember

  and oddly, metal.

  In his other hand, a dime.

  Dreamboat

  Hindus think you are a god. They’ve lifted you

  from your grassy plain on the peninsula.

  You have the heart and lungs of a dirigible.

  You are Ganesha.

  Here, Dumbo,

  daft and two-dimensional with ears

  to fly. In a dream

  I saw you in suburban Cincinnati. You went

  from gray to brown when you saw me

  and I got pinker.

  I loved you like my first pig,

  wanted to take you home

  but no rooms were big enough and Dad

  was driving a Beetle.

  Come by and visit. Don’t fly,

  as many out there cannot

  picture elephants in clouds.

  They’d shoot you down

  and then you’d make Ohio

  it’s only crater I’d have to share with tourists

  when all I ever wanted was to have you to myself

  and call you Al.

  Hookey

  I ask Titus, an alien from CX-48

  in the constellation Cassiopeia

  why he doesn’t want to meet

  the gang down at the bowling alley.

  He says they’ll take one look

  and want to knock some pins down

  with his head. He’s right.

  So let’s go fishing.

  We wade Paduka Creek halfway

  where Titus reaches down

  among the rocks and picks up

  trout, three per hand. Trout,

  he says six times before he lets them go.

  I’d like to get some pictures first,

  and he agrees but when I look at them,

  he’s barely there, only trout

  that look like they are roosting

  in the aspens. I forgot Titus

  really doesn’t capture well,

  if at all, and my pics look like I ran them

  all through Photoshop.

  I ask Titus why he’s always

  stretching his arms up in the air

  and he tells me that he’s reaching

  for his long-lost playmate

  back on CX-48. I ask him

  if he’d like to stand up

  on my shoulders. He does.

  Titus starts to cry. His tears

  come out all purple

  and silky like Johnson’s baby oil.

  Then he disappears.

  But only for a moment and then

  he’s back. I ask if he’s forgotten

  something and he tells me

  he was told it’s not his time

  but I know he misses the trout.

  Flower Power

  When the boogey man bent down

  to turn over a new leaf,

  something told me he was expecting

  an ugly grub. Not a periwinkle.

  What good’s a periwinkle

  to a boogey man whose job

  is scaring daylights o
ut of people?

  From the corner of my eye I watched him

  touch it with his half a finger.

  This little wink of blue light

  in the shallow dark of woods was sky

  and indeed, more winks

  under more leaves and fallen bark.

  The boogey man later told me,

  after all he was my brother,

  he felt the day breathe

  like the black of night breathes through stars.

  Next chance he got, he shaved

  his beard and combed his mop

  and fell for Myrtle, the girl

  in the blue tank top next door.

  In Season

  Steve’s raking oak leaves

  with his shirt off.

  Summer skin,

  color of the leaves.

  I’m in the diner

  across the street,

  sipping cider in a booth

  until he’s done,

  puts his shirt back on.

  Then’s when I’ll know

  it’s time to cross,

  bring up winter.

  Spring?

  Last Call

  We watched the door swing

  on its own. Remember?

  We took a table by the wall

  and cupped our ears to it

  when no one looked.

  We snapped our fingers

  and waved our hands

  over each other like magicians.

  Drafts slid from the back bar

  with its tiny globe above the sink.

  You got to shimmy

  with the half-naked girl.

  I got down with a bag of chips.

  We both threw up a little

  leaving the joint. Hangers-on

  guffawed. Some even foamed

  at the mouth a little.

  We did too, remember?

  There was an eclipse.

  Different Directions

  I promised my neighbor, Neil Jr.,

  that’s right, the one on the left

  with the Wild Yonder Blue Toyota,

  I would cut his grass for him while

  he was away on Pluto. I know,

  I know, that’s a lotta cutting,

  not to mention the gas and blade filing,

  but damn it, a deal’s a deal

  and a trip to Pluto’s no walk in the park.

  When no one was around pretending

  to be twiddling their thumbs

  I asked Neil Jr. why not just close

  your eyes and go out on the ice

  and jump up and down from one

  to four in the morning like everyone else

  who could never afford Pluto fare.

  At least when you’d come back inside,

  there’d be waffles waiting with steam

  rising to melt the frost off your lashes

  and juice from a real orange. The kind

  you’re always going on about,

  how it keeps you “in the pink.”

  Neil Jr. said he’d think it over,

  just because I asked, but I knew

  he’d been tired of all that grass growing

  in so many different directions

  for what’s it been, decades, ice ages,

  so I just gave him a little hug, you know,

  the kind you give a hometown hero

  who’s been to hell and back and damn

  if he didn’t hug me back with both arms.

  Wonders

  Stu loves to stroll

  in the gutters

  this hour of morning.

  Finds his first

  styrofoam cup of the day

  with lipstick on the rim,

  fresh as the first

  drops of coffee inside

  and ignoring what

  mothers everywhere warn,

  he tastes it

  and wonders if

  he’s ever really lived.

  He sets the cup on his desk

  where the secretaries

  stand around and giggle,

  wonder if

  it belongs to any of them

  and best of all, Stu

  wonders too.

  Postcard from Vermont

  I met this waiter

  who could take an order

  without a pad and pencil.

  I took him home to dinner

  but he disappeared

  before the soup. I found him

  in the pantry with a pie

  and we went straight to bed.

  I love him in his black bow tie

  and apron with its white

  long strings. I love those strings

  as much as I love any man.

  We finished with two chocolate

  cigars and placed their paper

  bands on each other’s fingers.

  Now it’s official.

  Less Is Milk

  You could drown yourself in that

  much milk. I wish

  you’d shake some flakes instead,

  add nuts, cuts of fruit,

  show the fridge your swell belly.

  What didn’t make it to the bowl,

  barely made it to the table. There,

  mere drop, a northern hemisphere,

  brain without a skull.

  Ask the tension on its surface:

  are you looking for an iris, pupil?

  Call in the professionals. Have them

  march around it, slightly bent

  at waists, hand behind them,

  folded on rumps. Would they then

  knock out reports? Would we cry for

  what’s been spilled?

  It changes faces, places,

  settles for a ring in varnish. History

  is what a drop can leave, left on its own.

  I see another gather, promise

  on my spoon’s bright silver.

  Down it quick.

  All gone.

  Bone.

  That You, Dawn?

  Will you please

  pick up that pink appliance you call

  a princess phone?

  I bet I caught you in your celadon chiffon,

  feet on the ceiling, cigarillo bobbing, ashes burning

  through the same old hole.

  So what’s up?

  Who’s goin’ down on who?

  Still walking dogs and disorienting in the underbrush?

  I’m at that jewelers on the Black Horse Pike,

  adding one more jinglet to my ankle

  cuff. And adding you

  to the tattoo on my ass you should be so lucky.

  Been watching Idol?

  Are there no men left in America who make you

  sob with song? I know, I know,

  not every boy’s a Dream Girl.

  Not every girl’s a girl!

  Uh-oh, nature’s on the mend and it’s been days.

  Stop for tea when you’re on the block.

  Remember,

  no matter who,

  you will always be my first

  second third.

  Call It Kiss

  When I put my lips to his, it is

  unspeakable because

  my lips are still. My lips

  stick for eternity

  but of course I cannot know this, only that

  they do not part

  nor his.

  We both think we are stone, or stoned;

  either way

  no one moves between us for the longest time
r />   and it is hours

  and ours.

  Laughing

  Next to me my boyfriend wakes up laughing.

  He says sleep makes him hold it back

  because he might wake others up.

  He says in some beds, it’s against the law

  and you can wake up with a ticket

  under your pillow or stuck in your ass crack.

  Now he’s got me laughing and the dog showing

  his back teeth and drooling. Now the dog

  is pissing himself. Without so much

  as a tickle, my boyfriend and I are too.

  We get out the garden hose, hose off.

  Next thing you know the whole neighborhood

  is out washing their cars, laughing

  at the bird poop on their fenders.

  Eventually the city shuts the water off

  and my boyfriend and I check into a motel

  until everything dries out. There’s where we see

  ourselves on the 6 o’clock news holding back

  laughing at the anchor’s gone limp coiffure.