Montauk

It's amazing
how little the sea needs
a lathered dispatch
of its excess
crunches underfoot
calcium
pearls
mermaid toenails
all sent ashore
with no memories
except the sound
of itself

Invalid Cookery...Recipe: Bacon Potato Salad

First off, you're going to need an oven full of bacon. Since it's hard to find ovens sold that way any more you'll need to load the bacon yourself. You can start the process with pigs, which is the traditional method, but I don't find much difference in flavor when I buy bacon straight from the store. Plus it saves time.

Lay slices straight into the oven. Stack them till they form a catastrophe of meat, shut the door and light the fire. At this point I realize I should have told you about balloons. You need them to store the smoke, which is what we want in the end, after all. It's fine if you don't have any. Who keeps balloons these days anyway? Use pillowcases or condoms or just improvise, you'll do fine. Find the leak in your oven—there is always one—and hose the draft into your balloons, filling a dozen, a hope's chest worth. Sore them in a cool, dry place.

Let the bacon continue to cook at body temperature. This can take between two and six months. This is a good time to get some other things done, like a divorce.

The potatoes are probably the second most important part of potato salad. You can find them under the earth in the fall. Store them in complete darkness till you need them. For obvious reasons it's important not to surprise them into the light. Better no light at all. Shutter the kitchen, turn off the electricity, work at night. Rub them for luck, remove their pinched eyes. Cup them in your hands, and, one by one, slip them into a lidded pot, boiling with brackish water and leaves from your yard (if you like that sort of thing).

The next part, well, frankly, here I always get a little lost. You need to mix the potatoes and the bacon smoke and some other ingredients, the number and identity of which escapes me. I remember green things, maybe scallion and fennel. There is yellow, an egg yolk, or maybe it's magic marker. And something red, but for the life of me I can't imaging what it is. To be honest, it's just a salad, so who fucking cares. Just fill it with what you have and let it go.

When you think it's ready, pack it in a small stone box and refrigerate. Serves 2 or 3, depending. Best eaten by someone who is leaving.

Attenzione! Vipers!

This snake of a thought
slims quietly into rockmelt
I am lost with talent
Unable to coax it loose

Oh, you mean that.

I will be born soon
Or rather,
have a birthday
Which is another way of saying the same thing
But in reverse
Or backwards

I take a long time to figure things out
And often get them wrong
It's amazing what parts of ourselves are so smart
What parts are utterly retarded
It's like there's only enough experience to go so far
A liquid in limited supply
Likely some slice of me
suffered a secret stroke
Blood was directed to other regions
Where it would solve other problems

For example
It took forever to figure out
How this would feel
It's a good thing
Someone came along
to remind me

I should thank them
Whoops

Too late

First There Was

Start
by saying it out loud.
When it's spoken
is when it begins.

Great Recessions

The farm could stay,
but when Lehman emptied its offices
late afternoon that Tuesday
treasure and all
the horses had to go

They were led to water
walked up the plank
dispatched on yachts
bereft of mortgage
the Atlantic swallowed whole

Back in Woodstock
the locked land
paddocks pristine
ready for residents
Snow is growing in fossil hoof prints
stables painted red
open for business
standing silent
in groves of gray ash

Nothing Unclean

When the door closes
I lose track of time
As it seeps backwards
I'm in a cab
I'm home
I'm in bed
You're shuddering next to me
I'm seventeen
They tell me she's disappeared into the bathroom
I'm with my broken father
Looking at the clouds
Expelled by the planes
Filling the only sky of Michigan
The air so fragile
It shatters when the rain hits it
Crashing on us running
Two hundred miles an hour
To the door
Thundered shut
My stomach cinches
The plane begins to rise