Little Hairs

A journal from DC called Big Cigars published this one in 1990. I have no idea when I first wrote it. Maybe 1986 or ’85. I’m right now rooting around for another poem that goes with it, with the three hungry lizards and the beets the size of basketballs.There are no lizards, beets or basketballs here I’m sad to report.

Little Hairs

I’ve squeezed the sky down
to a fist of blue
dreamt seduction by the mail
drummed fingers on the yellow
negligee of print, the timely oracle
cast coins and life-smudge
on a spinal gradient

When exhaust piled up on winter air
I sat beside the big dudes like a spud
and spat out mysteries
that wobbled on the pavement

Wandered in the crooks and folds
of flung limbs in a mauve elastic room
been driven back to white
by rotted daisies and a rum punch
caked with ice

Seen the stilted faces that I draw
to no effect and love my scars
and know the cuts that caused them

A nail splits
and we are in the snow bank
cut cheeks pressed between two
plough chunks lips pushed apart
teeth embedded in the rock yes
sometimes we are in the snow bank

And sometimes at the bar
with the woman who hates frozen
margaritas when she turns to ponder
an insolent punk and wonders
if he’s trying to pick her up
or put her down

Some things are for showing
do not speak if the wind is blowing
through abstracted branches and the moon
appears on forty-second street
cold makes the eyes grip lash to lash
and stuns the little hairs that creep