INDIGESTION

Americans eat a
lot. They eat out
of a mounting
frustration with

Jesus, who continues
not showing up for
their parties. Every
cheeseburger allows

them to believe
that God still
loves them and
approves of their

disapproval of others.
They die of indigestion.

CHANGES

A room my childhood
wants to have a
party in revisits
me in a dream.

The room is not
visible as a room.
It's more like a
series of ideas

about rooms that
have been woven
into a tapestry.
The tapestry is

hung in a painting
by Hans Holbein.

AUBADE
for Paul

A lazy moon
is saving its face
for later. Motors
turn over, letting

go of the night. A
life from which
all pronouns have
been removed

declares itself
not worth living.
A poet, in love
with a definite

article, dissolves
in a mirror of words.

MEMORY
for Maxine

Memory marks the
spot, as they say,
and even hits the
spot at times.

Sometimes memory
moves me to move
closer. Other times
it shoos me away.

I remember always
being exactly who
I was, despite a
mirror's static.

I remember remembering
who I pretended to be.

ALLEGORY

Invention's father,
a hobo with a hard-on
and a drug habit,
had abandoned

Invention's mother,
Necessity, years earlier.
This wasn't necessarily
a bad thing. It

permitted Invention
to grow up in
a world of
hurt and spared

him having to invent
reasons for his unhappiness.

HOPE

He works in the
no accounting for
taste department.
Poets, his data show,

waste paper while
wanting not to. He
locks his mother
in the closet every

morning to prevent
the darning of socks.
He calls home
continuously in a

conscientious effort to
drive the old lady insane.

LATEST

The latest in
a new series of
pushed envelopes
hatches in

imagination's
lab. A pill
proven to induce
awe in some over-

promotes death
in others and is
yanked from the
market at what

may or may not
be the last minute.