Need Machine Read online

  come so cheap. I’ll start where I start,

  but given the bulk discounts,

  why not go for it all. Just think of it –

  trust and love and, failing that,

  at least one of the two.

  Here, let me get a pin for you.

  The pleasure’s all mine.

  ♥

  If you can’t hear the sound of a heart,

  half-buried, grinding like a pulp mill

  then try a stethoscope. In one valve

  and out the other, as the textbooks say.

  A capacity for sadness is an incredible letdown.

  I’d rather see the whole litter

  of puppies neutered and be done with it –

  where was I going with that?

  I told you I get lost in low light.

  Cute little thing with your use of both hands,

  help me finish this off. Puppies:

  you can’t take them to the museum,

  no matter how much the kids plead.

  Just imagine the bones they’ll drag home.

  I THINK IT JUST MOVED

  They’ve been digging in the backyard again.

  Like a cavity, the ground near the fence

  has opened wide. From the kitchen window

  something was spotted: a sky-blue promise,

  a flirtation, an x.

  The world is full of people

  who get their teeth pulled. The world is full

  of people who pray to odds, who close their eyes

  when they sign. There are several other things

  I would like to tell you, but not here.

  There are rumours of gold, rumours

  of a French maid buried somewhere near the compost.

  In the moonlight you can see her garter belt,

  so lacy a man could curl up in it and sleep.

  They’ve been digging. The first one to tear a strip

  off her thigh-high skirt and make a flag of it wins.

  HIT AND RUN

  Swing a hefty wrench against a hollow pipe.

  The result sort of sounds like foul.

  This sort of thought can fill a lifetime.

  It can also occupy hours while high.

  Approximate Major League action everywhere!

  Let the toilet run and swing away. Like dusk

  lurking in the corners of a room, higher minds

  are unwilling to focus on anything in particular.

  The fun I’ve had robbed me blind.

  LIKE LIONS

  we mostly slept.

  Lounged on the stripmall’s runway,

  little concrete villa, all aluminum sides

  and neon light. So pretty in the dark.

  Thin-lipped weather in the plaza’s shallow avenues

  with its low curbs and garbage cans of different sizes.

  We all shook hands and grinned.

  She invited me over, or I her; the details

  are whitewashed with style. We hung around,

  dim and cool like a bunker before the war.

  Practiced taking our clothes off

  in a silence crisp as a pressed suit.

  Thumbed the buttons on the shirt

  of the room around us. We took big gulps.

  Like a trust fund, we became more luxurious

  with each passing day. Certainty fanned out

  like a search team. A general consensus wavered,

  broke, re-collected itself. Things got boring

  and one of us left. With apologies to those of you

  waiting for the payoff, I guess this is it.

  HANSARD

  The unacknowledged legislators of this evening’s meal

  insist we acknowledge our sources in the grandest style.

  They insist that when we grow up we become narrative poems.

  I’ve dined beneath Roman arches in a lightning storm.

  I’ve dined by the banks of the Arno, the Tiber, by three

  creeks you’ve never heard of. There are several other

  meals I could tell you about while we’re here.

  My belly swells with the music courtesy of SiriusXM

  Satellite Radio. Courtesy of modern plumbing,

  your water glass is filled. The unacknowledged legislators

  would like you to tip 15%. They would like

  you to return the cutlery. The unacknowledged legislators

  would like to thank Hollywood Records for the appearance

  of Miley Cyrus, who will be checking your purse at the exit.

  SYNDICATION

  Lassoed by one of those syndicated afternoons.

  If you want to get poetic about it, I was bound,

  gagged and leashed by the soft light of Cheers,

  Sam, Woody and the gang playing a game

  of Twenty Questions with me Abu Ghraib-style.

  Mostly, I wore boxers, through which

  I attended to dry skin. After Seinfeld,

  Law & Order. I could go on.

  During the commercials I hear a night court of mice

  in the walls, scratching and alive; gavels clap

  as they conduct awful trials in camera.

  LITTLE MISS HALTON REGION

  I confess to having cried in a legion hall

  as the local rag’s reporter/photographer point-formed

  my reaction to the indecency of being called runner-up.

  I confess to this reaction being anger at, among others,

  other contestants’ parents, though they were guilty

  only of an overzealous pride despite their children

  finishing several removes from the ‘LITTLE MISS

  HALTON REGION BEAUTY QUEEN’ sash.

  I acknowledge giving over to a grief that was swirling

  and sharp, and the locus of pain was obvious –

  Debbie Miller, who smiles like a hood ornament

  and smells like peppermint schnapps.

  I confess to the greater part of my anguish burning

  like a tire fire, which is to say in the months that followed

  I considered awful Debbie in ways that could be described

  as detailed or criminal, but however you classify

  these thoughts, they were without a doubt scaly and prehensile.

  And I confess to understanding the relevance

  of the phrase put out to pasture in its relation

  to the Platonic ideal of a capital-H Horse,

  and now admit to the flimsy laws that govern our talents

  and the evaluations thereof, namely, how in the moment’s

  I’m-rubber-you’re-glue equation I was what’s led into an Elmer’s factory.

  Mostly, I confess to visiting a certain vehicle

  in the McDonald’s parking lot while Debbie sat inside

  and watched her boyfriend eat, and what I did then

  was a study in contrast regarding a box cutter

  and a rear right tire, and all of a sudden I got old real quick,

  wielded that knife like a rough dollar-store comb,

  and while considering what to do next, the moon,

  in an effort to describe the world the way my painstakingly

  straightened hair described the asphalt,

  bled generously on my innocent scalp.

  SMOKING INDOORS

  Hooks empty. A shed of bent sheet metal.

  The sun tweaks your brain’s stub, flicks it,

  and a bylaw arm wrestles with a head full of splinters.

  Given the chance to ignore the elbow

  lifted from the table, most do.

  We do what we think we need to.

  Fingers printed with yellow ink, a fake tan

  nicotine drew. A cigarette’s papery rope unravelled.

  One headlight, weaving hand to mouth.

  Smoke half, butt the other half out.

  TUMOUR

  Little tumour, you’re a blip

  on the radar, corner of the body


  dust is swept in. If a mirror

  took negatives, archived them

  in a blender and let it dry – that would be you.

  Indifferent continent where metaphors go:

  zebra mussel, surgeon’s golf ball,

  a connect-the-dots dot.

  Death on a rusty tricycle.

  Claustrophobe, you ask for a little light –

  lungs open like a pair of hands attached to a kid

  at the beach, open-palmed, saying, Look what I found.

  AT HAND

  Think of life as taking a bath.

  We end up pickled and cold.

  Think of gravity as taking a bath:

  it’s hard to stand without slipping.

  Think of gravity as gravy,

  that urge to smother yourself in it.

  It’s after dinner and your uncle

  has loosened his pants by the light

  of the football game on TV.

  A vague shame circulates

  like a draft. Grab what’s at hand.

  Think of professional sports

  as a simile: there are so many

  teams, they’re so damn likeable.

  HOT MESS

  It is noon in the sweat glands of the gorgeous

  and the pheromones are doing their thing.

  But we are hungover and have to work in an hour.

  And you’re a tall drink of water because we’re so fucking thirsty,

  as lonely and out of reach as a balloon beached on the ceiling.

  Dear heart, tensored by spandex, uttering a saint’s lament,

  shiny side of a dime in the corner of a pickpocket’s eye. Well then.

  The boiler room has sprung a leak and it’s getting hot

  in here. We could click the like button on you all day.

  LOREM IPSUM

  Here on the island of umbrella drinks

  we make our own fun. Cocktails at three,

  cocktails at four, etc., with real fruit in the drinks,

  real plastic instead of glass. Pull out that ruler

  and draw me something straight-ish, won’t you?

  This is about grief, as it is, empty as a storm-haloed beach.

  It’s a wonderful button that holds your shirt tightly.

  From this room full of different-sized drawers

  I can hear the sound of torrid fucking next door;

  it’s not the motion of the ocean, as they say in the biz,

  but the belly of the whale you’re in.

  TAKING THE FUN OUT OF FUNCTION

  It was the season of car alarms. Things ached

  to get out. Things crawled from one hole

  to another. When brushed against,

  things scurried into bloom.

  Of the decade, thick as coleslaw,

  I think we can say, better luck next time.

  But who needs luck when what’s out there smells

  like cherries and sunscreen, urine and Tic Tacs.

  It was the season of visiting the mechanic.

  Sugar crawled out from the fuel lines;

  the wheels didn’t come off, they restructured.

  Of the one-liner, I think we can say, get the fuck out.

  That’s what the one-liner wants,

  it wants to get out.

  THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID

  The morning torches your face with a new crease;

  if you’ve been up all night, you’ll know what I mean.

  In the brush country of your skull a butterfly flexes

  and you wake up hard-pressed to say why.

  My stomach has invented several new knots

  and named them all after you. I’m so happy

  I could burst into flames. That’s what she said.

  Falling asleep is like climbing a tall, leafy tree.

  The branches get narrower – spot me.

  LIKE CLOCKWORK

  This in drudgery, like a cold lightning-bolted

  to your immune system. When playing

  tennis with your desires, whose knees

  do you take a crowbar to? Anapest, Budapest,

  vintage crabgrass makes bad lemonade.

  Looking back, there are clearly three muddy

  prints: one-legged invisible dog,

  do you smell something burning?

  Let’s waltz through this mess of a mess

  together and if someone says, Excuse me,

  Ms. Harding, your triple Axel is no good here,

  you’ll be speechless. But it’s okay,

  the vagaries you’ve been toting

  around in your high school gym bag

  have been saying it for years.

  XO

  There you are, skinny as the day’s first hour.

  And here I am, stalking you like the breeze

  hunting picnickers in the summer grass.

  What I’m trying to say is, it’s clear

  this isn’t working. You think of us as xo.

  I think of us as a three-act drama

  starring a small child and a jar of aspirin.

  Under the bright stage lights, it’s like

  you’re not even here. And then I’m ushered

  to my seat. Twinkle in the pilot’s eye,

  twinkle on the wing. Think of it as the new style

  of living: we come and go in the reflection

  of a heart monitor’s flatline. How swell.

  You should really put some ice on that.

  THIS TIME WITH FEELING

  Another night in the gator pond,

  quick splash, the plush of it,

  the flurry of hands – not your own –

  it’s a pleasure to meet you, it’s a real

  pleasure. A common theme runs through

  the night like a streaker. We strain

  for a glimpse then look away.

  We’re all tied up with nowhere to go.

  In bars, boys yell, Show us your tits!

  and girls say, No! World of soft

  bodies, world without in/out privileges,

  I dedicate this year to grief, the next

  to mild contentment. I dedicate

  these two hours to a tub of ice cream

  and wrestling reruns.

  A flu-like sentiment hangs over us

  like a hung jury, staid and pleading –

  Salvation Army tin, no, collection plate,

  no, the plated voice of Collections: I know,

  I know, just send us what you can.

  MEAN MATT

  He grew up in the woods without a lake in sight.

  His mother was a hellcat and his father was an itch.

  What’s good is rarely good.

  His Kmart aesthetic is infectious – he comes over once

  and your curtains are floral patterned and stained for weeks.

  Always flushes so you don’t know what was there.

  He’s a slow waltz with a gorgeous someone across a floor of tacks.

  Loves like a Brillo pad. Attentive as an empty fridge.

  And what, exactly, did you expect?

  He labours through rain season, mud season,

  sailing a sharp-blue kite through the middle of the night.

  This is what we think of when clouds appear.

  Once worked as a dentist on an oil rig. He’s what’s

  fresh rust and what’s dried blood.

  But he’s good at what he does.

  Sees daughters as spare parts, sons as useless legislation.

  Watches our sisters from a webcam no one knows is there.

  It’s always our fault for not knowing better.

  He has a bulldog’s jaw, the heart of an old engine.

  And here he is singing a song of apology

  for arriving late to your birthday party.

  He brought a present, and his intentions are as clear

  as a sliver of glass in chocolate cake.

  This will only be hard on one of you. Guess who?
/>   FOUND: THE SMELL OF GAS

  A case can be made

  for bookshops known to stock

  vistas of desolation: long hills,

  swamps, barren sand, the bone-white

  charm of a lost wallet.

  I like the fresher breeze,

  the way you lift up your hands

  and tell me you know where you are.

  All this we burned or traded. The bills,

  the paycheques. A stereo speaker, the new dishwasher.

  A radio, always present like a limp body

  at the bottom of one of the meaner lakes.

  I should be grateful for the noise, the smell of gas.

  If you’re smart you’ll dowse yourself in it

  as if that was all there was…

  But that wasn’t enough – we moved

  off College, just north of the noise

  trying to make sense of, not regret, exactly,

  its copper trap, but the way a fluke bull’s-eye

  in a dirty pub slipped by unproved.

  It has its attractions, but.

  We flicked our butts and later

  crossed the whole thing out.

  NOTES ON A THEME