More than her pugnacious breasts
Or buttocks like grapefruits in hip pockets,
Men notice her hair first:
A great silken rope swinging to her waist
They flounder for weapons
Against her strength
And hope one day to bring her down to their level;
To use her body to wipe their feet.
They find fault to lessen the terror.
Her grandmother married her to a man with 60 acres--
If a woman is a mule, let her at least be well off--
But she left him for another man.
You cain't get her with no fish sandwich.
He demanded that she hide her hair,
And when he died she let it down.
All the men came running--
Each one offering to make her a mule.
She preferred managing the store
To managing her respectability.
Until one day Tea Cake saunters in--
Camels and Courvoisier--
"Oooh! it's a lady!"
She comes home from the store,
Finding him on her porch with a string full of fish.
"Hey, sweet thang,
Can I buy you a fish sandwich?"
Humor
Errata 001 (Shall I Phone You or Nudge You?)
He leaves work between six and seven every night.
Takes the same route home.
Obeys every traffic sign.
Pays his bills;
No bad checks;
No registered firearms:
The world's most boring human.
He has very nice garbage:
He's not looking for buff.
Rather, meticulous.
Refined.
Anal.
He eats. They linger; she fawns over him.
The busboy,
Over the whine of the vacuum,
Tells him the pair should leave.
She loves the pinched nasally whine of his voice.
Quivering, she asks him to stay and pronounce--
Sensually--
"Passport"
He does.
"You're right we should leave"
He asks if she would like to have breakfast with him.
"Sure. Fine. Whatever."
Foolishly confident, he replies:
"Shall I phone you or nudge you?"
They did not have breakfast.
A computer would never match her with him
Ode to the Lint in My Belly Button (2011)
Originally published in Tributaries (2011)
Oh lint in my bellybutton,
Whence comest thou?
Surely you,
Who keeps my navel warm at night,
Are the manifestation of love
And warmth,
And all things good,
Which cradle in the center
Of my being.
Lint, though you are gray,
Do not despair!
Those who wash you out
Are empty inside,
Where I am full.
Oh lint in my bellybutton,
How I miss thee so,
When I search
And find naught
In the center of my being.
Lint, you Omphalic dust
Collecting in the center of life,
I mourn for the outties
Who do not know you.
Lint you gay gathering
Of dust and of hair,
May you ever return to my navel:
May we ever be paired.
Sophistry and Solipsism in the New Millennium 