Three Poems (April 9, 2009. New Pink Moon. Issue 3)

Dear Penthouse, Long Time Reader, First Time Driver

Side by side, the man/machine
and the perfect space

He eyes her from a hundred yards
carves his image into hers
makes his signal, attempts
his frontal entry

But the round peg tip goes into the square
hole at the wrong angle – enjambed
his thin white vehicle gleams wet
in the cloud-pierced stratosphere

Personified curb, the she,
immune to the effort, carves 
at his circumcision scars
Whitewalls, drawn dark

He pulls out, and comes
again with determination
and for a moment, perfect
he feels it like maybe she

feels it to, but he’s impotent
makes a small dent and then
out again, forth and back, in
and out, she begins to doubt

his ability, parallel parking  
back and forth, thrust and shifter
tugging the wheel to feel her closer
to his sixteen-year-old frame

Beneath the Moon in the Naked Suburban Water

we don’t dare bottle-spin
or luck leave it up to
everyone’s a body feeling
a jealousy at home somewhere
maybe brewing in the curtains
of an art misunderstanding
of the misunderstood art
practiced in a pool among the naked
friend’s girlfriend’s nipples
you’d love to lunch on
like cherries in WashingtonD.C.
or the shadowy places between
the boys legs and the blue water

this diving board is like a runway
this girl is like an April spring I pried
myself away from for the fear of hurting
the place in your heart where something
trivial lives; some societal burden you grew
up with, but never grew up to

I am sorry for you that the body
is something to fear, that the bodice
is cast to the side and his wife
doesn’t really care that I’m kissing
her nipples in the water, that I pressed
up against her soda machine, her stream
is the steam of the pool, is the us
in the young wool of our bodies, still
living in this 85 degrees, in these pleas
we make, for a hand, a comment, a gesture
of goodwill toward the thigh
toward tickling his giver, her river
flows and we can all see that now
her flowers are crispy in the waxing gibbous

Her Neck Froze the Look

Her neck froze the look in his eye
subtle ski-slope incline in her snow white
shoulder blades conquered his gaze
getting coffee in Austin
after the AWP conference

He’d felt a chill last night
in a few of the
16th street
bars
but the spring air across Texas
is cool in the night
and for that he’d didn’t look
to his right

But she was standing there
watching him shiver over
the rim of her rocks-glass
wondering where he was
from, what was his
story?

And the next day she stood
down the aisle in the bookfair
and couldn’t bear those 40
odd steps down the blue carpet

She turned, and he
smelling the crisp corner
of her pheromones
like honey, or some
milk-soaked cereal
that’s bad for you
sweet and bright
red, or better yet,
blue