visitation day

Mercy Rehab ventures a lick
of a glazed fingertip
holding back the bite 'til she can
recite one more reason
why she deserves
the doughnut in front of her.

Chastity Brownbelt,
recalling up to the coat closet
last night,
(real fur
bare ass)
chases her
post-blackout bearclaw
with a cold blue razzberry tea

Mercy expects at noon
to endure greedy hands,
probing her forgotten body,
unmapped for so long until
her remaining son
went up
without the possibility of parole.

Chastity plucks baby spider
legs tangled in her neck hair,
grateful for the
plate glass shop window
dampening the morning traffic.
she cannot ascertain
why the lady framed
by that window
engages her glazed
doughnut
like a potentially deadly orgasm.

Mercy with her napkin on her
lap,
registers epiphany with each tiny
bite.
she loves this place
except when Sergio switches shifts
with some stranger
who doesn’t know how she likes it. 

did you put it on the list?

kids want milk.
I must have tobacco.
swing on over to the
grocery store.
low magneto fluorescent hum under
auntie & abuela's bumping gums
(because this piece is proof  I’m alive)
Or, an alibi
when I invent
a
time
machine
so I can do
one thing
seemingly normal and ordinary,
and then go back and
do
a double,
nefarious and evil.

maybe if I give old blue a nice piece of ham, he’ll shut the fuck up

a sketch book
search engine predilection
for robot boobs
is my cue.
take the boy out to Yosemite, dude
Kerrick Canyon
Peeler Lake
get him drunk
on the land
on hot chocolate
then begin
what I hope is an ongoing
series of love, fucking, love
of fucking, perils
of love, living
with dick,
liking
(really liking) your
mate, making
sure if he does
like-like mates,
like that,
it’s nothing,  impromptu.
just a first dip.

but what a film strip
framed by the fire
cut as
alternating horror
and fascination contort his face.

stripes and streams of
cold star cords,
galaxies and
city boy
eyes.
my fucking god, one
night up there--
Yellow went the sky.
for an unreasonably long time.
lit ten seconds.
seriously. maybe 5.
count to six.
For the whole sky to be lit like that?
headlines said Chinese Space Junk.
Bridgeport residents
spooked.
irritable. scrappy.

he pokes
agitates the fire
scans the ashes, puzzling under
nectarine
chunks of ember

pausing,
de-
riddle-ize-
ing
his mind of
the nagging suspicion:
it didn’t go so hot,
his very first time.

oh yeh. the title.
I give old
blue a biscuit
and ham;
he shut the fuck up
so I could write
this poem.

You get to know your Grandma

beached in
pepto tile. avocado
accents.
acoustically explosive: the
call of Mahalia Mendoza.
Sub-valve deluge going on 24
hours and 90 minutes.
Post-pink chicken
salad from that rinky-dink
IGA on MLK.
Mahalia Mendoza
prefers the complexity of venison.
Hey! she says from
within, on my
minty mouthwash way
to pluck ticks &
dip my
dog, Flash, in tomato juice,
as she got skunked by a skunk.
are you out there?
Let me tell you what I did.
uncanny
how natural it is to stop for a minute.
the door
is just a veil.
Fritz the Nite Owl showed the
one
where Werewolf
pops the legs and arms
off Vlad’s last barbie,
quadruple amputee,
covered in mustard
for the dog to lick.
Hey!
she tells me,
sit down where you going so fast
everybody shits.
You remember the pig.
after we dressed him.
I saved that piece
you never did keep
started to smell after Smokey got aholt of it.
Fingers of Mahalia’s Rose Milk
guts,
radiating from the crack between the floor and the door.
her life is shaved ice.
her summers are stained hands.
she coughed up rocks for
the raspa palace
stands,
half finished,
Tyvek flapping like long underwear.
nothing
but ice
and the cold blades that shave it. 

Jimmy

Just got off the phone
with my Uncle Jim

2 years, 11
months, and
14 days in FCI Memphis behind
him. He’s
the one who taught me how to play
drums. Spent
thousands of rounds failing to get me interested in
guns. Took
me seriously as a
teenager, listened
patiently expecting
I might eventually have something to
say.
Sold me
the Kawasaki
KZ 750 that he bought off the floor in
1983 then forgot about
in his garage,
among the bikes
he liked
better
and the bones of
grandpa's old Volvo sedans.
500
oh-riginal miles on it.
Tennessee via Greyhound,
blue streak back to Austin.
I never
felt like such a badass than when I was on
that bike. Perfect
age,  immortal, but
cognizant of crippling
disfigurement ahead
as the elderly motorist
makes a left on my green.

Motherfucker
has prostate
cancer. Getting
his balls
radiated 5 days a
week. He’s
tired. And
his roof leaks.