June rolls around, and I hear them,
Coiling their canisters
In the meadows
And depressions
Left by picnic blankets.
They want to bung me up,
To pepper-spray me until
My eye-water leaves me
Smudged rugged.
They want me to slow choke,
And wake with a stale fur
Like lichen over
Teeth and tongue.
These are your flowers, you poets,
These Husseinist bioarms,
These roses and lilies,
Petunias and daffodils,
Ranked to smear summer
Across the unchallenged face.
I.
An–, GREEK: without.
–Orexis, GREEK: appetite.
It’s true enough.
I lost my hunger for just about everything:
Love, fun, people.
I hungered only for hunger,
And hunger meant control.
I probably would have dragged
My unfed muscles
Across a mile of
Shattered willow pattern crockery,
Just to hit a calorie deficit.
And what do we see,
Depicted in said fragments?
A father’s consternation, blue.
A sister’s muted concern, white.
Friends smashed, morals smashed,
My feet blooded, a celery heart in each hand.
II.
Writing on the topic proves challenging.
Not emotionally — I’m a certified sharer —
But pragmatically.
My brain’s changed;
I find it hard now to pull on that old suit —
It’s a tight fit.
He was a baker,
She was gluten-free,
By all accounts
Their love
Was never meant to be.
Each day the baker
Felt keenly her lack;
Why, in God’s name,
Did he
Love a coeliac?
But then the baker,
Sick of being glum,
Baked a new bread
Of brown rice flour
And xanthan gum.
She bought the whole loaf,
Dispelling his woes,
And ate it unbuttered
(Being, as she was,
Averse to lactose).
But now the milkman,
Ostensibly coy,
Makes his own play,
Stocking,
I hear, ten pints of soy.
Snort your Adderall off a cereal bowl
In the family kitchen:
Breakfast is the most important meal
When it comes to your cognition.
A word on obsession:
It’s only an issue
If you’ve fewer than two.
He was on the couch again.
He was having thoughts again.
Thoughts about killing Grandma.
Sheila inked on her Moleskine:
Primary caregiver’s primary caregiver.
They sat in silence for fifty-nine minutes.
Then he admitted: she’s old, I’m young–
I won’t succumb to her arthritic thumb.
Nodding like a pendulum, Sheila
Penned a careful addendum:
Remind Karl re: Boohoo order.
I resent the term push up; it’s
Press up.
I press myself to the carpet with
Inhale.
I hold the contraction, until
Up. Three.
I like to pretend, on my
Way up,
That my breath assists with
The lift,
As if I were a hovercraft,
Exhaust-
ing through the nostrils, escaping
Trace smells,
Like footprints, or my best friend’s
Vomit.
Peter was a funny boy
Who’d masticate raw cabbage;
He’d drop dry leaves into his mouth
And crunch them like a savage.
Peter was the kind of boy
For whom the age-old adage,
“Eat your greens and you’ll stay lean”,
Was stooped in excess baggage.
Peter was a quirky boy
Who made up his own language,
Codifying leafy greens
As pudding good enough to ravage.
Shorter Poems 