A poem from the larger collection, An Autumn for Kora Mao.
October 20, 2017
Waiting for Jennifer Rodriguez, Lost Lake, Capitol Hill
1
I’m thinking I haven’t waited in line in a while.
Not at Arco, buying blueberry beer.
Or at the espresso stand, Stopwatch.
Or at any of the countless bathrooms.
The golden taste of pilsner waits.
It waits for me and there are skulls.
I taste the damp in the room that
riddles with chuckling and murmurs.
There’s so much rain and nobody’s out.
To be the only lad clad in near rhymes.
The bar a spotless waiting room.
What is this realm of simulated outrage?
I express myself in causations.
Fickle liminal Seattle banter.
And the rage of the bloodied earlobe.
Statuary stories told in the dark.
The Great Dark Hype penned I today,
another faded comment for all.
For the ruse of truth is ruthless.
2
Dreams of Aladdin, the man who made it.
Made things happen in 70 minutes.
Remembering Aladdin porn stumbled upon.
Was it Dogpile or Alta Vista or?
Seeing the humanization of Jasmine.
fucking the humanization of Rajah.
What succinct grotesque humanity
needed to represent absurd bestiality.
Like medicine for the clandestinely weak
it is a pustule of cherishing and now
a vomit dribble into a corner.
Samples of bacteria booming like cronies.
You were placed here like writing
clickbait in the blossom of fingers.
I hunched to rewind. You as mantle.
Ignore it all the same way you do.
Ignore and blend and urge it up.
Space is the age we commit.
Entering an open comment of disagree.
3
A final reminder for transcending the sun.
The last land grab in the futurist book.
A momentary opening in the sink.
One equivocal fragment of possessed time.
The coat that supported a camel’s back.
When the study exited the nose
an alarm system was tripped.
It could all be based on dressing down.
It if was entirely fictionalized.
But we never memorized any of it.
Let us bet the last ones to whisper.
Only the best know to keep it vague.
Who has named an ocean “Pacific”?
The one who nodded then shoved the tables.
We all smile in the face of rain.
A single employee looks barely feminine.
Distinguishing “recreate” and “recreate.”
Time arches in blasts of black counters.
Hesitancy in front of the unknown Lolita.
It is the rampart blown into Cascadia.
4
The loud comfort of the dropped utensil.
We loot the gazes of many.
I imagine the strange capabilities of men
who can talk and laugh together.
I wander the minds of strange writers
who can open their mouths again.
It is an able-bodied impressioning.
It is all about the impressing of demons.
Whose ideas only torque slightly.
while entire ranges of excuses push and push
a pregnant eclipse and the parents lead
and the elastic humming is altogether
like a spread of specialty dreams.
Which lies of zero sum peers exist
to taste and wager in the cold play?
Aftermath is a suggestion as usual.
Altercation a wonderous wordlet
amidst rather abominable situations.
Me and an altered fatigue flatly free.
5
Are we ready for our last kissing moment?
Is it the last time a spine will curve
the slink and spindled breath of momentum?
A memento is this approach.
At last the depressened sits and toggles.
And at last our mind clears like latching
and the moon is otherwise devoured
and everyone speaks in gray guffawing.
Twin black fans along the ceiling
sheltering us and shouldering us too.
It is the black of the what of the blush.
I dream of the despair for so many.
A Black Lives Matter sign hangs lonely.
Lovely is its existence as sad as a kiss,
ritualized presence, all are impeached.
To each we are this: the peace
that comes as depreciation,
a token or koan broken, a face
that splits the cheeks of the stars.
6, Stiff! Stiffer! Stiffest!
The brown spiders have names you know.
And the spells are sitter spells.
Remember thy bacterial arrangements?
Remember thy utmost privacies?
We sift photos like sands in hourglasses,
tip pieces of flattened glass again
like the acute clues of baubles.
Dangling drips of water dipped into throat
the translucent reality of energy
a squint or a song lapping all and along.
And we try to touch the glass’s refraction
which owes us a subtle grass’s reflection.
I see Gizzi in a man soaked by rain.
His face as awe-enlightened as able.
It hurts to try and restore certainty
and confidence is a pummel
or solder or tumbled gem.
The polished surface is who we want
to be within range of fingertips, eyes.
7
In the blank of the morrow.
In the blankness of the marrow!
In the blank of today we are marrow.
We are the lone blanks in the gullet.
we are the calories of the barrel
that study the penis of the bullet.
And so for and so sworn and so.
It is the glow of the interior.
Perhaps absorbed to silk without light.
For cavernous our systems exist.
New, they’d do it all wither without
a well-lit situation careening.
Did you know the pen that arranges this
is a 1.0 Mitsubishi Pencil? I know.
We are in shock and awe of taxonomy.
We live a little when they edge our
ontologies just beyond reach of skin.
Unless you breathe the same way on paper.
For fuck’s sake just put down the pen.
8, for Rachel Nelson
I like to pretend I’m a master of
the near-world rhyme! And surely
these glasses will leave me barely
bodied. Totally doomed, one may
say to me when there’s nothing
left to inject as support and
it’s cold and night is a shirt filled
with pumpkins. Night is not the shirt
but the belly and the practical squeeze
for all it is all it is is all is
all. I text you: “Just ate
El Mushroom and it’s now enjoying
the ride of my esophagus bus.”
Which means what and why and
who and now. Nothing is helping
except that it all is and we always
are. Or/and we always arc.
Questioning sanity while dancing
with a privilege wail known through questions.
9
The curious is the cat, I remember
hearing when I sat in the forest
in Cambodia and traveled the world
like adolescents really do, really,
until it’s stupefyingly opaque,
or orderly or open, or old,
or orchestrated, beyond the
reaches of the singular entity be it
person or a—