Category: Uncategorized

It was winter the day I set my book down, took glasses off, when the frames hit the glass, there was no other version of who we were left to be,was same old same old no matter what.

I drew a breath as cold as the first one in Iowa, a breeze so cold it froze my vomit, on the way home from pretending my sister and I were married at a fancy restaurant, just so I could get a drink.

“To bring me down here, three flights under our fair city, to see you, on that knockabout stage , open up your chords and bleed out, to watch me see you suffer adulation like that, to know how I care, and still want me to see it, is proof positive how you make art out of my suffering.

Art is a game to you, and I a worthy participant.”

– Doris

When dad bowls on Mondays, 

mom sets up the card table so 

we eat dinner with The Monkees.  

I have a crush on wool hat Mike, elan for a seventh grader.  

WCFL plays “Tapioca Tundra.”  

The lyrics make no sense but I’m drawn to them. 

In English we write about hidden meanings.  

I don’t like when meanings hide, though I hide too. 

What was the difference between the touch you gave me 

and the touch you painted?

Did it not hit the same note,

the same nerve

that morning when we woke up 

you coughed jumped out of bed

clothes thrown on.

You were a coat hanger with a dress dangled off of it.

Weeks later the painting, on the postcard you sent,

is it still a painting if 

ink and pencil

charcoal and fiber 

take me back to that morning in bed,

with you murmuring mistake

all the way down the stairs.