hold the ham

when i woke up
i noticed again
the spot where you used to
charge your phone,
that you were the last person
to do all the laundry,
how you propped up
all the pictures
and it seems completely unbearable.
inside this apartment cooks
a terrible red stew.
just below the floor boards
it simmers. at first it was fired
with anticipation and now
it's the saddest energies of absence,
the slow desperation of a
rolling boil.
i have to drink it with everything
i do. a cup for walking the
hallway, a bowl as i lay
alone in bed. soup pools at my feet
in the shower. it's no
good that you're out there
drinking too. i bet you find it in
your pockets, in your hands,
in your mouth between bites
and all this rich meatiness
is killing me.

you're glowing

there was a girl coming up the alley
and i could see her in my rear-view mirror.
her shoes had neon tongues
and she was drinking mountain dew
from the bottle
but somewhere on top of her big, blond
head was a beige beanie.
she ate a meal of
ice cream cake with radishes for dessert.
she walks the alley flicking bad
song lyrics into peoples' cars.
she'll stay like that,
i think.
her clunky, badly lit lot in life
is to glow dumbly
into parked cars.

this is a rock

what if i laid on my gritty floor all morning?
what if i lay here and pretend to have died
mysteriously? i could look good dead.
i could place a pot of flowers by my feet
and crumple some candy in my mouth. it could
have been a choke or another accident.
maybe they'll assume i'm really something,
a spectacle of sorts. maybe they'll keep me
fresh, leave me to sun that spills through the
kitchen window.
i ask only that you water my plants,
eat all the food from my fridge,
cancel my credit card and
take my nephew to the theater
because i spent so much money
on those tickets.

table and chairs

here are the plaid chairs we share
when we drink coffee and eat food
with cheese and deposit wrappers and mail
into our pockets when we stand up.
i saw you the other day
with a letter jammed in your pants.
i thought about what
a little note in a pink envelope could
say but i didn't muster up the concern to ask.
whatever that letter meant would
stay creased inside anyhow,
showing it's true glowing glue
to it's one reader
who'd shoot the words from a distance
with long, stringy sex lines
and nails. then those pink pages are plaid.
i think there are hunter plaid stories to tell
in bars, with dark plaid feelings
hemming them in, making full plaid pictures.
there are fall plaids
coming strong and they mismatch me,
always make me look fat and sad.
i bellow, i blow my nose into old
flannel sheets, crammed
with such similar colors and patterns.