K

K was the worst kind of girlfriend. The kind that did drugs in bathrooms. The kind that joked about all the guys who hit on her. The kind that never had any girlfriends. The kind that came home late without apology, smelling wrong. We fell in love quickly, I pulled to the shoulder of the freeway for our first kiss and we slept that night on my new floor, under our breath’s blanket. Our romance stretched thin when she moved to take a false degree and a series of cooking jobs in New York. She got so broke. I stayed in her squatter’s flat where no one was ever home at dinnertime. Her room was walled in empty stainless steel restaurant shelves. She had one contact lens. She put it in her good eye, the other missed everything, the city invisible grey, spoiling around her. Late that winter I left her in an ice storm, windows spider frozen.

Sure

I’ve been seeking winter

But I think she’s avoiding me

It’s OK, I understand

She has a lot of things to do

Tell her she can come by anytime

I’ll wait for her dark entrance

Melting under melted earth

Toe Jam

In a corner of my life

I am with you

Not the corner

I am in

The other corner

In the corner

Afterwards

 

I drive the late road to a kind of home

Black and noise enough

The Chicago freight line rolls in at the same time

We trace the river together in

Acetaminophen lights

With thoughts of other places

Laundered

I am the end

Of your end

Turn around

Unrepeat

The Boys of October

Terrific grey monsters

arrived tonight invisible  

dark sent 

our watery groves

they left us a place

horned bulging arteries

sweet swamp city

rotten of winter

Your damn recessions

I was shot twelve years
With my enemy
It proved nothing
Last accounting
I left acred blood
On your winter steps
I promise
This all keeps going
Until it doesn't