Girls

An apartments the size of a grave
and just as expensive. It costs a life
to be buried on Avenue A.
Two girls reunite in their street corner booth

where many nights have been spent confiding 
about boys, the plausible deniability
of taxicab blowjobs, flights home over
one bridge or another.

She's just returned from a semester in Africa.
The unencumbered smiles beaming from
the children's faces linger like a sunburn.
Her friend is agonizing over a guy who believes in her

wholeheartedly. She commands him like a drone
with the send button on her phone.
She asks her friend if she saw the article in the Times 
about women in Afghanistan who die for their poetry?

Is it still warring over there? the friend says.
Her laugh is ambushed by a new feeling, something like
regret at having allowed herself to be wrapped
in the personality of her dresses for so many years.

First thing when she got home she pulled her grandmother’s old fur
out of storage and wrangled the antlers onto the cat
but the smile didn't come. Tonight, we're going dancing.
The boys are meeting us there. Does that work?

She nods. A button is pushed and a car carries them
to a warehouse in Bushwick which twenty years ago
was a wonderful crack house. Oh, it's so good to see you again!
She laughs and pretends she is living the night like it's her last

the whole time thinking about a young girl
across the world speaking her poem
into a telephone so someone else can hear it
before the line goes dead.

Mixed

I pierce the clouds with light
beneath the print of No. 6
hanging over my mantle
you send your showers down
orange blue yellow
shaking from the canvas
the window becomes
the painting in water and glass
raindrops assuming the yellow
flowers and black leaves
quaking in the wind
we drown into each other
almost breaking from our bodies
we plunge completely
as the violins purple fumes
rise over the room

my favorite part of you
is the little absence
where I can put myself

the drops wrench apart
and bleed down the glass
into the earth
they will never be
what they were before
as red and blue blended are no
longer red and blue but purple
as the blood mixed in our veins
as you mixed in my arms

We Go Way Back

SCENE: The Conversation Pit/ Rehearsal space of a campus house. The furniture is soiled, any ornamentation, carpeting or furnishing has been stripped, the windows boarded up, to make the space more amenable to loud rock and roll and sloppy drinking. Amplifiers line the walls. Vintage recording equipment, Guitars on stands, a half-dismantled drum set. The room is lit by a neon "Miller High Life" sign.

Yogi and Taylor - Early 20s.

Henry and Fitzy- Mid-20s

*******************************************

Fitzy, Yogi and Taylor have just returned from a bike ride, sweaty and clothed appropriately.

They all drink Genessee beer out of cans.


Henry: Are you guys brothers or...?

Yogi: Pretty much.

Taylor: We go way back. Way back to sharing women and...

Henry: Oh yeah.

Yogi:... drinking whiskey.

Laughter.

Taylor: I'll never forget that, dude. We're riding our bikes though, we were like, what, 14? Riding our bikes in Grove City, just ridin' around and then Yogi's like, "Hey, look girls, you want me to rape you?" They're like, "You can't rape the willing." Dude, we did U-turns...

Yogi makes the sound of screeching tires.

Taylor:...got their numbers, she was at my house the next day...

Henry: How old were they?

Taylor: Fuckin' Yogi was like, "Hey loosen her up so I can fuck her next." All right. Fuckin' popped my cherry on this bitch. Then I'm like, "You gotta go, I got plans today. I think Yogi wants to see you." She goes down, wouldn't fuck him cause she was sore. I was like "Yeeeeaaagh!"

Laughter.

Taylor: He fucked her, what, two days later?

Yogi: Yeah, we banged. She's hot.

Taylor: She was.

Yogi: She's like two years younger than us.

Fitzy: So she was 12?

Taylor: Like 8th grade.

Yogi: Like 13.

Fitzy: Oh, that's good.

Taylor: It was sweet.

Yogi: It's what I-- Dude, I been, I've been hittin' it since I was 12.

Taylor: Yeah bro, every time I get this chick, like I'll meet a chick at the bar. I'll be like, "Hey, you remember such and such from high school? Yeah, I just banged her last night." Yeah it's like, "yeah she sucked my dick." I'm like Mutherfucker.

Laughter.

Taylor: Every time.

Yogi: Every, every girl, like he he used to like these girls and like, he like, "Hey man, I'm talking to..." I was like, "Man, go ahead, I fucked her."

Fitzy: Remember them--

Yogi: Every time.

Fitzy: Remember the postal hoes?

Yogi: Dude, yeah, I fuckin' rode butt naked in front of'em.

Henry: Who are the postal hoes?

Fitzy: These, these trails out, out on the West Side we grew up riding at. There's all these, In Lincoln Village, There was all these... girls, these hoes, would just hang out, like groupies.

Yogi: Us dirtbag BMXers sweatin' our balls off, would get our dicks-- Like I remember Fat Steve gettin' his dick sucked by that girl and she threw up all over him.

Fitzy: Oh yeah!

Laughter.

Fitzy: In the back... It was so funny cause like Westland is just down the street and all the football jocks would like come by and they'd be so mad that us dirtbag shitheel bike riders are getting all the trim. And they ain't gettin' shit.