Why I should Move to New York City

This sucks
Everyone is comparing their penis size
And licking each others assholes
And making sure small sections
Of their nipples are showing
And all I get is this white page
Like a filthy widow in a blizzard.

A spider in a cave collecting dew.

I wanted to grab all those close cropped crotches
But I was too worried about them seeing
The little hairs around my nipples.
I could pluck them out,
But I like them actually.
Some things you gotta keep for yourself
Even if they embarrass you,
Like ugly boyfriends or alcoholic mothers or abusive stepfathers or dead uncles or pedophilic priests (shiny hats and scarves).

Neat little packages dressed up as bombs.

Nothing is real here or there
I should be listening to music
But a lousy dream burst my eardrums
When I was napping.

Fiddleheads unraveling like sloths¾
Vogue dancers in peach sleeves.

Starting the fire on an April evening
The dog asleep in a plastic box
Nuzzling with the ottoman.

So there are trees!
Their song is hushed and watery like
A diving-bell Wurlitzer
Tres mujeres en las piazzas del agua oscuro
Pretending to be trees!

Leading me there, my mother scrapes together
Two mandibles, teeth rattling, baby bones, bones of the future.
Will she make me wear them again?
I am so overgrown.
I even drink neat whiskey, wear bras when necessary,
Refill the butter dishes of memory.

The fabric of memory is threadbare
and embroidery a necessary tool for remembering.
Might as well make it gold thread,
That old symbol always shiny.

Please, do not throw salt in my hair
I just finished picking out all the memories
Of paper cuts and broken wine glasses.

I have moved so far
you read me poems over the phone.
The breakwater of your voice
Reassuring and commemorative.
Candles help.

I broke her favorite wine flute,
Pastel, frosted, painted
She promised that she didn’t mind,
It was one of a kind, but she didn’t care.
Still I tried to glue it back together.
Futile child-games, misconceptions of the dying-games
Played by grown-ups and their consumptive livers.
She still can’t watch certain movies with me.
“Cali, this is weird…”

Ah the movies, the gills through which
Life can be filtered, ruined and sieved out
To its finest polluted particulates.
Ash in the jet stream, beers on the porch swing
And nobody here has ever heard of Tarkovsky.