Envelope
T-boning the line at the post office, two Bart Simpson clones
Flip off a curmudgeonly Ned Flanders on the fly. So I gift
The blond, freckled duo a poem from the envelope, one
About Nero crucifying Peter upside down. To a suit badgering
His wife to cut in line for duck stamps I fork over a poem
Venerating the shorn head of Orpheus ambling down the Hebrus.
Rifling through the envelope I exculpate a poem
About Robert Johnson whipping up a malted milkshake
For Baal at the crossroad, plant it in the palm of a lady bombinating
Over her son’s slurping habit. “What gives with that envelope mister?”
A hectoring wise guy ribs from back of the line. “It holds
Answers to America’s cornflake addiction,” I rifle back.
“Got anything fragile, liquid, perishable, or potentially hazardous
In that envelope?” the counter clerk trills in her best Meryl Streep
Impression. “Possibly,” I shoot back. “Such are
Things partisan, frangible, sunny.” I watch
As she plants a kiss on the envelope with a rubber stamp,
And the walled mug shots beam ineluctable, flatliner smiles.
Morning Papers Waltz1
It’s like being chained to some dead actress;
& she keeps trying to tell you something horribly maudlin.
–Amiri Baraka
Salutations to anarchist bean eaters of Chiapas.
Salutations to Antifa wunderkinder chasing pieces of a man.
Salutations to the phallus, the vagina, the viviparous.
Section A
We’ve boozed ourselves for over 9,000 years.
Rogue cop pulls trigger in a fit of bedspring jitters.
Six-year olds juiced on Adderall rob hipsters at gunpoint.
Salutations to subway dreamers and spearmint gum.
Salutations to asphyxiating oil addiction and asthmatic Raqqa streets.
Salutations to corporate welfare recipients mewing at public troughs.
Section B
62 Down: “How much ____ much?”
Garfield exculpates a can of tuna in the attic.
25 Across: So precious for Shell or ExxonMobil
Salutations to loutish horoscopes and redemptive parity.
Salutations to cancer wards throwing their weight around.
Salutations to frenemies of Blac Chyna and sumo wrestlers of nihilism.
Section C
Cagey nooses wash ashore on Instagramic beaches.
In fits and starts, the new Cortés tweets his frog perspective.
Nice rural families grow bullish on the prison industrial complex.
1Textual riff on Johann Strauss’s Morgenblätter (1863), the Morning Papers Waltz.
Auction
The auctioneer migrates
from Hoosier cant to pidgin scat.
Shadows trade up from white
pickets to whiter hydrangeas.
Sweat bees sift between powdered
donuts and bottled musk.
Wiry kids tethered to grass stains swap out
Fred Waring for Billie Holiday on the Victrola.
A lover braced against another changes her mind
about bidding on the Elmer Fudd doll.
One shotgun fetish, she opines, elbow
bumping her soulmate, is enough.