Gamut

He looks at her with kind eyes

as she freely paints the wall

the battle hall a sacred temple of fortitude and restlessness,

the ever gentleness of undressing in the mirror,

the masked horizon flaking

white stage make-up,

riots about London and bread

for a fair capital gains market

four-door hemi pick-up

dumped in the front lawn on stereotypical cinder blocks,

the front wood porch sinking at its middle,

depressed to be so alive

carrying the weight of five rotting generations

filled with buffalo wings and blue cheese dressing—

the dented mattress batted up against the wall

between it and the bed

where she’s getting it from behind

he looks at her with round eyes

and taps her stills like mountains,

augers ale from ancient pines

and stews a serum

naked stream the desert wash,

dappled moon tide

dips the sun in tar and feather,

chase it down like shivers in the night,

dogs in the night scream at me for being too nice

bite my tongue for me and send it to my mother

in a white cardboard box tied with a pink satin ribbon

a pair of ballet slippers

gnawed apart like chicken bones tossed on the trailer floor

over his bare shoulder—

the colder it gets the more I think I will be stuck—

I’m wrong, incapacitated

crying in the car on the way home

through hushed unnatural fog,

snow and ice on the ground on the tree branches

and the whole sky is white,

my whole vision is stark, bleak as Edith

caring for a miserable person

is absurdist humor at its finest,

pointing out and smiling at us

a raccoon digging the trash on the docks of Seattle,

stopped and turned to me to take a picture,

snitched some old Chinese food

and stickered away

to his cache of midday robberies.