Notes from the Butcher Shop

SPAM Poetry Prompt #629
http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/poetic-asides/poetry-prompts/friday-spam-poetry-prompt-629

I don’t want no short sausage man
Always selling me something fake
I don’t want no one run faster than I can
Or pay an inch for the mile he take

I don’t want no excuses for days
Always telling me something slick
I don’t want them sideways ways
Got a mouth to feed and a bone to pick

I don’t want no ride in your Cadillac
Always blinding me with something bright
I don’t want your momma ask for her money back
Cause the dirt on your tongue is blacker than night

I don’t want no more self-disguise
Always convincing me I’m too this
I don’t want to pluck out my own two eyes
To blindly miss the portents I miss

Butler Summer

Fan blades
propel sleep, but not rest, through body
White noise
purifies serrated desperation below
Long cord
delineates too many chances or the solution
Wood chair
undermines earnest pursuit of envy
Book shelf
showcases literacy least of all
Soft sheets
come second to that half damp skin
Mem ry
spins shit into infallible gold

Specific Paralysis

Cut my feet off

While I slept

And snickered when the sun

Unbent its waking legs

Because I could not follow suit

A Fine Thread

He let the spiders
crawl up my arms
and told me to dance.
I was a widow, too—
venomous,
vertiginous,
bargaining with a ghost
I could taste,
chastened by drought,
monitored by cautious
satellites.
The god who built me
a universe
also broke the sun.

The Nature of Almost Everything

He prepared their dinner
with a devotion
that once belonged solely to her,
her most prized and hated possession.
He turned the animal’s flesh
over in his mouth,
where a reservoir of praise
and never-have-I-evers
once sprang from his tongue,
a divine pool of security.
   (It was just the condensation
                  of hot air
      encountering cold truth.)

Morning Prayer

No more clean shirts.
No more bread.
No more bill money.

Only a rat race against an ambient
specter

         that

poisons the air/
rots the wood/
sells my soul
to the lowest bidder.

A Source of Blame

Rest your darkness in my steady hands,
while the day is radiant and my fingers nimble,
and I will pull it apart like fresh warm bread,
to eagerly feast upon the blockages of legacy
that leave you crooked, naked, drunk . . .
Just to keep you company.

Let frailty seep through your still bones,
while the night is nimble and my throat dry,
and I will sip it like Jacksonville moonshine,
to feel the instant, sweeping fire that consumes
all the good intentions before they’re known.
Just to keep me honest.

So This is Freedom

It’s this entire unconquerable island;
Saber rattlers in the sky conspire to crush arms and livers and legs,
Doors cut too small for their frames, the draft of a neighbor’s privacy,
Dog shit, the ghetto’s black eye.
And me, little dumpling, I crossed that border long ago,
And my eyes work harder than they’re used to . . .
Why am I cowering on the kitchen table,
When anything is possible on the ground?
I have buried my loves at the bottom of a laundry basket,
Locked away in a Manhattan basement.

Back in Town

The empire lights
as viewed from the south
An old friend calls
through concrete mouth

Relinquish the thing desired most
for the thing desired slightly more

So I’ll sit for a pint
in the Urban Remote
Tied up in the warmth
of a wool overcoat

(But bluer than the warmness of pressing organs
or the collision of two cratered moons)

Here or there
still tied to the same one
Naked with thirst
Branded by sun

Scenarios rise and burst like soap bubbles

My head is the wand and you are the puffing child

To a Narc

The old supply is running dry . . .
To bleed empty for a paper cut-out,
a textbook example
Smooth rhythms and delicate releases
pad the cell, feed the dissonance
Confusion is my straightjacket
Anguish is my guardian
But beyond, the day is bright
and abundant and worthy—

Fill the room with this light and
feel its offering in my marrow