Pickle Tub
I’ve got a heart like a pickle tub
you can turn it over and drum on it for change
it’s full of living things, it’s good for you
even if the smell isn’t for everyone
buckets, I say, for the big ideas
for my fears like they’re
koi for sale on the sidewalk
curving against white plastic or blue
ten whole gallons for your large scale projects
it means business, and it sloshes
if you try to carry it too far too fast
road salt and ice water will
burn your hands with cold
but zipped into plastic pouches
chambers like a fist-sized organ
they’ll make ice cream
just shake ‘em up
what I mean is I can make sweetness
from contract-grade materials
I’ve got a heart like a pickle tub
widely available, sure, but industrial strength
it won’t cost you much to take it home
but it matters what you can do with it
Moussaka
I’ve started to suspect that I speak in fish and you speak in nets
that we’re hydroelectric, only generating drone
that you are cynical like a Warhol Brillo box and like the West Village
you’ve made your own dark and intelligent past irrelevant
Your tongue for all I know tastes like Staten Island
maybe I should bag the entire enterprise
You are slippery as the class bully, self-inflated like the prices
of after school snacks. I speak in sugar, you sawdust a reply
When you agree to meet you show up like a bucket of used antifreeze
and later your caress is a cold floor
You made me think my touch turned you to stone
that kiss on the bridge my interborough crime
I want to pull your hair, find out if my nails
down your back make you hard
I want the thing itself and not the commentary
I secretly hope I hate the book you asked me to read
and I dream of taking you baffled to a poetry reading
and being brave enough to know your confusion is your fault and not mine
but it’s a mistake to bring you to my havens
where you toss down your scorn like a hat and pick it up only when you leave
To make you wince, show me throat and shy belly
and knock-knees – this, I suspect, is what I want from you
not your castor oil consciousness and not your nets
I want your tallow soap, the parts of you that smear
I want your unpatchable shirt
your defensiveness like soured tea
I want your six year-old self to comfort
because I refuse to give your current one the same
O angel, o boy philosopher. I understand so little
of what I am trying to be, and you do not help
You don’t identify with the animals I associate you with
you are as borderline beautiful as the Gowanus Canal
You take me to the certified best diner in Queens and this
is what wins my heart, hands it to you baked into the moussaka
while you sink into your self-loathing like it’s a high buttoned collar
holding close your razor-bumped neck
I’ll call you back, but only the version of you
sneaking out of the office late morning to take a train with me to Brooklyn
when I kiss you for half a second you are as peaceful
as an alley cat even though you tremble the whole way through
If I could get you out of city limits, I swear
you’d be that much nicer or you’d fall to pieces
but your hand is the live wire of Times Square, I wouldn’t grab it
for love nor money nor your adored Kurt Cobain
Sea-Witch: Coney Island
She could have said no—not coy, I know
what I’m about, she could have thrown
the nib of fishbone back to stick in my craw
It's all revocable while in negotiation, can't help it
if the limpet took my terms, speak up, girl, be vocal
knocking down my carnival door to get her carnal delights
Stunned by the lights, the clangor and above us
the dock strewn with cracked clams, Brighton bait
and purple-brown guts, delicious, but it unnerves
I'm sure, when you’re daddy's precious spawn
After the split, her fresh-hewn stilts will pick their way
down that slimy length to boardwalk slats
beer-blessed sand and a maelstrom of smells
One street down, shuffling wide-eyed
she’ll leave a salty trail past my painted sign:
THE OCTO-WOMAN, WITCH FROM THE DEEP
HALF LADY, HALF SQUID : COME SEE THE TENTACLED HAG
until it’s MTA brights not freakshow flash
dripping cold through her hair to goosefleshed skin
Her three days begin at the end of the line
take any train, I told her
he’ll find you wherever you wash up
in midtown's foaming shoals
She could have refused—wisps like her have left
with something different than they bargained for
altogether wetter, better. There’s more than one way
to get them in my tentacles, to tempt
a one-tail off the brighter path and into my trenches
She will have what she's after
sure as ink and bone, but she is not alone in that:
there’s plenty left for me and mine.