Fish Thief

He had been trundling around
on the bottom of that lake for decades,
long before they even came to live there.
They – my great aunt and uncle
who finally bought their dream house on the lake.
(His lake, if you ask me.)

But deeds and property rights of course meant nothing
to this scaly, shelled relic who had spent so many days
in glorious depths and shallows
filled with algae and mud
and plenty,
yes, plenty of fish,
his consumption of which
would be his undoing.

It was just after dark when they caught him.
They sent the kids up to the house
but we could still hear everything –
most notably, his dry, creaking, gasp
like an ancient, sealed cask
being cracked open by greedy, pillaging hands
as they put him on his back
and pushed the life out of his armored chest
with an oar
as my great aunt gleefully asked me,
her eyes glowing a bright, unnatural green
like some menacing, nocturnal creature
"Have you ever had turtle soup?"

Suburban Haiku

Boys with .22s
shoot bottles out in the woods,
heard but never seen.

Skinny high school girls
vomit on manicured lawns
while parents travel.

Silent lanky deer
graze from sprouting flower beds.
Let them eat it all.

Angry teenagers
spray paint "fuck" on traffic signs
for no real reason.

Slow, stubbly fathers
skin their large, greasy knuckles
fixing bikes and cars.

The ice melts inside
the big, blue cooler of beer
sitting by the pool.

In My Dreams, I Burn For You

I'm just coming out of the grocery store
when I see him forcing you and the dog into a van.
He's tall and wiry with a balding head and scraggly beard
which, luckily, happens to be soaked in gasoline.
I use one hand to drag him out of the van by his filthy, thinning hair,
and the other to spark my cheap plastic lighter
which I use to ignite his beard.
He tries to beat the fire out but can't,
and I am determined to hold on to his hair until he stops flailing.
You wake me. My heart is pounding.
I pull you closer, mutter a brief synopsis
and then try to go back to sleep,
and hopefully back into the dream as well
because I'd like to crack open the bastard's skull for good measure,
and then set fire to the rest of his body
so we can roast marshmallows
and make s'mores right there in the parking lot
and maybe save a few choice charred chunks for the dog.

The Adjacent Patient

Through that wall, she sits in a lonely half-dark,
Creating herself in a pupa of blankets, tubes, and gauze.
She tells me that she wants me near, and
Through the wall, I feel her, tugging meekly at my soul.

But I can't. When I appear, she is instantly
My girl, not the perfect patient, recumbent
In her antiseptic splendor, willing
Her cells to salve her sores. My girl

Is not a patient. She idly casts her body toward me
Like a paper airplane, desirous of crash more than flight.
Her limbs, deadened by disuse, spring free
Suddenly, oblivious of the feeble stitches binding them together.

I see it in her eyes. Even as she sits there, watching me sustain her,
Wash wounds, she is quickened. Her flesh trembles against her frame,
Desperate to free her of that fractured figure. That look - so
Compelling, I fight myself as I leave, not to check if she's gotten loose.

Sometimes I hear her, down the hall, rustling sheets or taking a drink,
Organic taps that rumble in my blood.
They are my trophies, my tokens -- the sounds of my patient
In her native convalescence - safe in mild sorrow.

So I can't. I won't. Instead, I wonder, removed, if the next visit,
The one I have to make, will bring forth screams unimaginable,
Wails of terror, progress dissolving to scarlet-stung stains,
Or will it bring riotous energy, terrible joy, and scare me away again?

Intimidation

I sit with one hand curled
around a mug of sugar-free
fat-free
super-powered
chemically-sustained
instant coffee
enhancing the very life
it sucks slowly away.

From the stereo in the next room
Rufus Wainwright croons out
Leonard Cohen
the King of Darkness.
His words curl around me
a slow, sweet, unforgiving steam.
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Who am I to write?