spiral-bound.net( Perpetuating Our Culture of Narcissism )

For Alyssa
5/31/80 – 4/15/11

You come in from a cigarette on the back porch
trailing perfume I can’t pinpoint at Macy’s anymore.
Sarah says something and your laugh knows one volume
warming the kitchen tiles and leftover turkey.

Great Aunt Christine puffs up in the dining room
and mutters something unsavory about peas in a pod
her tits sagging onto the polished walnut table, heavy
with the husband she never managed to find.

I’d rather be tucked in a pod next to your smile
though its wingspan wouldn’t leave much room for me
and it is too bright and beautiful for plant enclosure
than anywhere near her sourpuss cat-butt scowl.

Why hasn’t karma slapped her down
the stairs, accidentally? Why is she
still sucking up life without tasting it
                                                             and you’re gone?

When the Stoned Wheat Thins box top
insists upon flapping open like a flyaway curl
I almost know how it feels to shake a child.

Crackers bounce off cabinet doors and the stove
crushed by stomping toes I’m sure aren’t mine
their soft staleness a reflection on my parenting.

The crumbs exact burred revenge
clinging between my bleach crisp sheets
biting the ankles they find there.

Friday night
you blew me off
to do lines
with your gym buddies.

I wasn’t committed
to memory formation
and forgave you.

On Saturday
after last call
you whiskey tornado whirled
through my front door
banged your head
on ‘a thing’
in my kitchen
and got stuck
pulling off your shirt.

I poured you
a glass of water
and drove you home.

Paying for
a bottle of wine
and my Pad Thai
didn’t padlock anything
so please
stop trying to escape
from your zoo exhibit.

I thought
fucking someone
would be easier
than rolling over
Saturday morning
and saying
I don’t love you
anymore and
maybe
never did.

The city smiles, sloping face
split along staggered streets
lined with tooth-houses,
some in straight, glossy rows—
thick carpet-lined lawns
and the sting of fresh paint;
most are rotting, crooked,
or a little yellow.

Behind waist-high grass
and wild, tangled bushes,
flake-peel paint mildews,
Astroturf porches sodden and
stinking from October to June,
each corner a damp orgy of
Steel Reserve, spiders, and
twice-smoked cigarettes.

Dirt parking lots wedge
between whored-out mansions—
jagged, tight lattices
of Connecticut plates;
cellophane leaf skeletons
clog curb-elbows and gutters,
sticky with dried vomit
and spermicidal lube.

Grease specked pizza boxes
cling to paint-thin iron fences;
third-story balconies groan,
pregnant with tartan couches
and rusted folding chairs,
their hairlines braided
with dead-bulbed strands
of Christmas lights.