Can Someone Break

Eleventh Street. A Vietnam vet laughs at Thanksgiving dinner.

He was sort of a mean drunk. Don't tell me about birds and

their tiny bones, skies and stone's throws. I ate all of Boo Boo's

peanut butter with a spoon, taught her the word fuck. Stuck my

gum in the pages of her book and slammed it shut. I don't want

to hear about light or foxes, the smell of leaves when they're

wet. At home | peed with the door wide open. Even when

people were over. My feet always bare and my hair knotted.

Fuck houses in trees and nests with speckled eggs in them.

"I Will Survive" blasting at a Lower East Side block party.

Crumpled concrete and willows weeping in community gardens.

I don't need the flare of sun setting over water. I don't need the

moon or god dammed night. A broken swing and a diner with

pumpernickel bread. A door in an abandoned building falling

across my body. Don't even mention a field in the distance, all

the stupid flowers growing in groves. Disjointed plastic limbs.

The hair chopped off a doll with no anatomy. She's naked and

discarded in the corner of my room. And another thing, fuck stars.

(appears in Girl Life, 2016).