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?

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.

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.

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.

The ground outside the liquor store is carpeted with cigarette butts. Marlboros, Camel Lights, Newports. They cling to one another and the granite curb. Smokestacks leaning against the corrugated metal siding, the men contribute to this ecosystem. She sees the frame from behind. Their eyes on her back, on the bottle: five dollar Pinot grigio. She flexes her toes, embarrassed. Sliding into the passenger side of the car, she tosses the wine in the back seat and shuts the door. She locks it twice.

She fumbles through her bag, collecting a pile of stray gum wrappers. The air in the car is stale and thick on the back of her throat. She rubs a hand across her right knee three times and once down the calf. The hubcap of the car in the next spot is scuffed. Dandelion puffs twirl in lazy tornadoes among the discarded cigarettes. Her gaze moves to her bare legs. Attention out the window might initiate eye contact.

Basking in a patch of freckles on her thigh is a single pimple, angry and peaked. A half glance through the windshield confirms that the men are nodding and laughing in her direction. Swiping the back of her hand under her nose, she checks for sources of humiliation. Her face is framed in the side-view mirror; she chances a lick of her lips.

She captures the pimple with thumb and forefinger.

It swells as she squeezes, head white and bulbous. The first attempt fails. Flushing red, the skin bristles at the invasion. She retreats. Two swipes with her middle finger realigns each eyebrow. She doesn’t notice that she is holding her breath. Her second charge is more calculated, approaching the pore at an angle. In its last opaque moments, the thin skin is the color of sweat-stained undershirts. A rigid snake of sebum and cellular garbage coils against her thumbnail. She exhales, pinching the skin until it oozes only blood.

Wiping her fingers on the side of the seat, she aborts a coy smile out the window and picks instead at an errant cuticle. She hates waiting in the car.

my car has become a psychopathic bird's toilet

pretty weeds