Wildwood, New Jersey

Fringe happened

and hair bigger

than any night sky.

Ocean stars beckon something

else, something sinister

and beautiful.

There was this place

on the boardwalk (where

it was windy all

the time) where

they promised to make you a Star

in an instant.  Framed photos

of young Madonna and men

that looked like women, tough

and lovely and alien.

They made you a Star

by taking you into a recording

booth, a small, sweaty room

that smelled of cigarettes

and onions and allowing you to sing

your song of choice over the original music,

like Karaoke that lasted forever.

It was tempting, but I never did it.

My uncle Ed did once.

He came home all proud with

a cassette tape and played us this

awkward version of “Fight For Your Right to Party.”

The truth, though,

about Karaoke is

that it should never last any longer

than around three and a half minutes,

four minutes tops.  Any longer

than that is a little obscene.

I don’t know.  It might have been worth it. 

Ed was pretty damn satisfied with that song,

and you know what, his mom

seemed proud of him, too,

and all of us kids loved it

when he played it for

us that night he got

home, smiling so big

it hurt his face.

That Mineral Point Summer Was Terrible But Drenched in Song

All these Bollywood

Indian sisters sound

the same, he said

then walked upstairs.

We were blinded

in a town

80 people small

the year our luck turned

to jelly.

We never minded

going nowhere

without any more than

whatever we could grab

between our teeth,

though some days

seemed inarguably nasty. 

I liked to think I could tell the difference

between their voices, Lata, Asha, and

Usha, their gorgeous, orchestrated

wailing, but any variation

was meaningless to my crude ears.

I listened to them anyway, nearly

nonstop, all Wisconsin summer long, and as

our lives fell apart, deep in the sticks,

in my head

I saw people dancing.

The Toynbee Tiles

Having gone full ice

I fell down, melting

in many

droplets, particles

to be reconstituted

years later

on the Planet

Jupiter.  On Earth, 

we were many

alive with 

problems, most

of them imaginary. 

You know how it goes.  One

minute I am the rain and the next

many, many people. 

Humans.  All of us

had trouble with

remembering

what     it was

we came from.  We were

sea-rain, sky-sun

flesh-bodies

and at last

forgetful mountains

of molecules heading

up

to resurrect us.

Mirror Earth

We were bored

So the rapists       mowed the lawns
So we were all captains    of a land
                   so we were
    each steering the fates
    of one clunky body
    and it's collisions

So symmetry is a strange    game
as in    where there is a magnet
things fly
    to it    and soon we are all in
                   the same bed

So there is always the drug tunnel, the tunnel
       of drugs and it's damp-drug glow
      was warmer than the hallucinations
      of the very, very cold.      Even sand
      has died of thirst       long ago

                  And by who's hand

can I take this other exoskeleton    this ship
and the next one
and the next
and say, we are filled with the same    invisible  

       electric snow
like meeting      your own                  ghost
like admitting,  yes
I am a conscientious human,      but I still
do these six things

          And I'll bet we can name them, too
          All six


                 

In Gilgo

Please, listen.  This actually happened:

Shannon goes to work.  Shannon, hater
of cops, calls 911 in a panic.
Please, help me they are trying to kill me please help me.
She runs out of the house that belongs to
the man who hired her for the evening.  Runs
to a neighbor's and bangs on the door.
Again, please, help me they are trying to kill me please help me.
The kindly man/neighbor does        try,
calls the police, but she runs       off    and
hides
          beneath      the parked boat in the yard, then into
the ink of      the night.    M/n
spies a car searching and driving, her driver.  She did have
          a John and a driver.

(Mike-the driver drove her to John then waited three hours
for the business to be done.  Then, he says, he heard screaming
and was summoned by John to remove her.  Neither claims to
have touched her.)

(Mike-the-driver says he searched the long island for almost an hour, but she
wouldn't come near him.  Shannon ran into the brush and
              the bramble.  Then he left her.)

The police, long-hated by Shannon, cannot find her.

                   Months pass.

One cop led by a nose on a dog finds bones in the bracken, thinks he found her.
It isn't Shannon.  Nor is the next set nor the next nor the next nor the next.
This growth is a tomb eleven women deep, one job strong, sex-working women, selling
their time to men without faces, until there was one face to remember.
                   
                  (The thesaurus lists the following synonyms for "prostitute," none of which
                seemed accurate here unless used to describe the murderer:

                                 hustler        betrayer       cheater      deceiver)


               More and more months.

One quarter-mile from where she was last seen running, Shannon's purse is found in the copse.
         Then Shannon's jeans.  Then her shoes.  Then, a quarter-mile from the jeans, deeper in the    
         swamp-reeds, Shannon.  Or what was Shannon.  Her tell-tale metal-jaw, a gift given years prior
         by a nettled boyfriend, tells them.

                                                     But.    

The cops rule that for Shannon, hater of cops, it wasn't the killer of eleven just like her, the killer
at large, but an       unhappy

                             accident.  Shannon,

they say, who was likely psychotic, ran on her own into the night-bramble, the catch-weeds,
                             the pricks, the gorse, then dropped her purse,
                             fell out of her shoes,

                             and out of her jeans then, simply,        yielded
                             to the     ever-present            elements.


                 Her family.  They don't buy it.
                 Do you buy it?
     

                         What we know:

                         Shannon did die.  Eleven others did, too.
                         The town held its nightmares as real as cadavers.
                         It does, it still does.
                         Shannon was scared.  She was scared.

                         And now, I am quoting my husband,

                                       Evil is male, it is most assuredly              
                                                                   male.




       

Catherine Zeta-Narcissist

I.

Men in the ambiguous flesh lake
know me,        and my weakness
is hardly       your business.
I am all.  I am         leaning
                    on the wicked.

Ladies in the lake come out as if
you are the only world       in the world!
         
I said, be your own cotton cake
and nobody's       badger!

               

II.
             
          So squirm
between the saving
and the silt
and haunt them
like culture
       
       like icing

                   piping
so thick and so
sweet nobody
wants it



       

The Ills

The weak dazed
when the house
came revealing Friday

Some days stink
this one never smelled
like anything

A gutsy party
as sexual as
everyone agreed

Berlin was a beast
psychic twits
at our feet

Just wondering
if the beast had
his medicine