art building

I am familiar with the smells of congealed oil
mineral spirits ink wax dust and shavings
humid rusted screens drying turpentine and snow.
It is a thorough smell.

I still like that vinyl chair right out of The Island.
Someone's knife slipped sometime ago leaving
a small amount of foam bulging from a plastic slit
like that Italian modernist's 'paintings.'

I've spent time waiting here off and on.
It's like a friendly lobby on nowhere.
No one asks why draw the most accurate peach
or lightbulb? Why ask?

You drag the crumbling willow carbon
to feel the dry scrape against paper tooth
and to see a specific edge.
I would like to reinhabit my mind like that.

graphic design

you bought that tea that helps you fall in love
it had attractive round fabric bags
also available: organic cottons, chocolates, spelt
beer goggles they say without the alcohol

what or whom did you fall in with? the label
had typographic concerns, space constraints
now you've got this inflatable lover
he came rolled up in a tube

only of use in the carpool lane really
and only if you don't get pulled over
you've got an empty vessel there ma'am
pretty silent at the dinner table i'll bet

urban

strangers are everywhere
here calling to other
strangers calling out
to me jiggly baby jiggly

they want to instruct me
on their gods and bodies
white people are gonna
die just like everyone
else you gotta boyfriend?

last week one embraced me
my fury maybe surprised
him ooh you're a little
uptight there but maybe not

disagreement

we would all agree
this train car smells foul today
women clutch their noses

others scoff
it's not that bad
it could be worse
who does she think she is
anyway

our proselytizer has vanished
leaving only his fetid shadow
shouting

employment

we play a sad game of theft
you take my library my mirrors
i take your seventeenth year
your earned summer breezes
among the rich

we don't relish our booty
it's just a snatching
extracting a nasty something
from the mouth of a baby
too rich or too poisonous

it's a marvelous disgust
a frowning over trails of saliva
a casting aside