Five Poems
The Price of Okra
Lit crit with the speedo architect aw god what a narky bitch
When lambo, buy the dip
two suicides off the Williamsburg Bridge
all this Fire Island modernism
and the sun like a mouthful of vodka.
Coleridge is here, and Lulu. “I’m working
on a building,” Speedo says, “that’ll fuck you
like the price of okra.” I don’t get it. I’m mid-
point on a bell curve. Lulu is releasing years
of trauma watching the birds make a dress for
Cinderella. Flippening/flappening, pump and dump.
How fast can you catch an STD?
Cedar siding, post-and-beam, Canasta and charades
no lawns, no fences, suspended floors that draw the breezes
like silk assets and wrap dresses —yes
a close reading is open to suggestion, like
hunger and harm and my second sex. Someone
takes a polaroid of Speedo’s deck, someone
slut walks from Vienna to The Met, someone
makes a margarita as we paint the walls without the edges.
When moon, buy the dip
I draw a line of beauty from your stomach to your hip.
The novel is dead. The novel is dead
Someone put on Pet Sounds because Brian Wilson’s dead.
The Blue Terrace
We love without demand
and bitch with a tender eye
like the pull of Hockney’s pool paintings
all that afternoon light
splashing this way and that
and Nick’s pale ass
Have you ever seen a paler ass
or a bluer terrace
or more loneliness
as the sun in its white trunks?
We’re never lonely at Paul’s house
fridge of beer
good tequila
reggaeton
Susana in the bath
that poet that everyone says
is almost
American surrealism
and the other one who writes abt boardwalks
and the blue & red of Giotto,
the splash
a bigger splash
God we’re a snooze
So many mediocre poets
doing so many mediocre things
Like John’s old dick
I can barely stir in the sunlight like a hyacinth
Susana is posting her tan lines
I told her I was happy for her
I lied a bit
like so many little things
vying for attention.
Playland
Maybe I don’t care enough about the testament of poor Villon
or why the boys are eating danish on the beach.
Pilates, adoration, mass
a glorious orgasm of Marian grottoes,
in their weekend king Chubbies my heart drawn out in twenty strokes.
Keta / MINE. And Debbie on the decks with oyster mouth—
O punch cut the cigar. Again I dreamt I died on the other
side of innocence. Dead again in the National Gallery. Cursed
like finding peanuts in the cockpit at the Indy. Me be cool
with Madge. Be cool with Diana. Straight jack it, modern
power. Running red lights on Route 1A. Waves like spilt
pills, foamy mouths. Dick thick chocolate shell. Clench-
and-crack, curious pout. That’s how they do it in Dubai.
All jaw and then a whipping at the cart’s tail. To Dear Harry
Boy everything could have been so perfect, like acid revealing
an invisible script. Neck muscle and Nikon. Pinball at Playland.
I’m bitter over sweet, an unkept bikini. I’m black habits singing
hymns to the amusement of passing boats.
Rapture
O Hannah
you spell your name with two of everything.
It’s the summer of the comet.
I want to vibrate like an angel
and you’re reading a book
that isn’t a gift
for anyone over thirty.
Everything tends towards a conclusion that doesn’t occur.
I have no defense for poesy.
Does anyone know how to get to the Bop House?
The whole shit is breaking down
and my refrigerator isn’t ready for riot season.
John Maus has a new single called I Hate Antichrist.
What do we talk about when we talk about luxury?
You’re reading A Poem for Vipers when lifeguards
pull a dead swimmer
from the water off Hampton Beach.
The weather is beautiful.
I eat aspirin for dinner and drink Rolling Rock.
Karen Read is framed like a Nantucket sunset.
O Hannah
we lost two of everything.
On the rooftop
of an apartment on Ashworth Ave
we watch a cumshot
dance on the tip
of a
telescope.
Labor Day
I’m going to eat them
I tell Jill when she asks
what’s going to happen to the kids
it’s Neddy’s Labor Day party
and we’re standing by the pool;
Jill is drunk, bulwarked in white
and once my dirty laundry
becomes the state of the nation
she bats her eyes one too many times
Jill never liked my wife
and in broad daylight her warpaint
is merciless
she leans in
touches my arm and says
no, really, what about the kids
it’s the same proposal
my wife had eight years ago;
I know how to wash laundry
I say, and air out a cannonball
that makes Ned’s modest pool
heave with misfortune.
- Five Poems - July 28, 2025
* This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are producs of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
