salvaged napkin pocket poetry

"Asian Market"

today at the market I pushed and pulled and squeezed half the cold case underneath my hands
watched faces open and fold in anticipation of their next heartbeat
Interspersed with spice and light bouncing off linoleum floors
Sweet pungent sour salted bodies
Unwinding in time like long digestive tracks seeking to eat and be fed
Seeking and walking, edema in the ankles

Eyes like midwinter lakes full of fish.




"Random"

It suddenly hit
simultaneously across the city: a scream whispered into an alley, shower tiles, the long
interconnected labyrinth of ears: 6 billion and counting
As if all creation was bending over us waiting to open our mouths and speak...
Am I real? is it real?
We reached out to ourselves in the dream looking for an inch of flesh to pinch.
(You can't tickle yourself for the same reason you know)
but still we throw our words like doves into orbit looking for land: the wailing of guitars, the mouths moving in rush hour: umpires of traffic in glass boxes, old women tithing their two cents on public buses,
Returning not with olive branches but the ash of falling stars.