Scissors

Every four months she cuts my hair

Scissors, tattoos

Her name starts with an A

One of those newer ones

Allyssa or Allison

Not Agnes or Alice

She's young

No wrinkles

No marks of divorce 

or bad credit

We talk

The work

The weather

I tell her I'm going back to college,

that I'm getting grayer 

One here, two there

It's all there:

The worried lines

The bad marks

The average credit

"So, how old are you?" she asks, her fingers pale.

I tell her

Her face doesn't register anything

She's seen me before

She's done her own math

"You look ten years younger."

My folks had me young

Too young

In L.A

Maybe that had something to do with it

I don't know

I wonder how many haircuts I've had

The buzz cuts

The feathered jobs

And how many more I'll have

When it's all over

There will be a number

There always is

That motherfucker had 106 haircuts

He packed for Yosemite 17 times

He drank moonshine 3 times

He

He

She runs my card and I sign

I take note I've been spending

a lot of money lately

Piling more shit around me

She sees the tip and thanks me

I was a waiter

For years

Dropping off burgers and butter

I was young

I remember

"Thanks again," I say. "If you make it to Yosemite do a little hiking. See the park. Don't just get drunk and feed the squirrels."

Vines

A small radio was playing on a crowded bookcase. 70s music. Love songs. Reminded him of growing up in L.A.

He was just in the old neighborhood. Looked smaller, but prettier. His eyes traced the trees and cracked streets back to when he was a kid. Rattled. Quiet. The spider in his hand.

“What do you think?” he asked her, taking in her profile, the button nose. The skies were gray, the trees green and brown.

“It’s gorgeous,” she said, the scarf around her neck wrapped around his memory.

“It is,” he said, pushing back the bad memories and pulling in the good. “It really is.”

Sometimes stories and lives are told in thousands of words. And other times not so much.

Figs

Back then I used to eat figs

I was already gone

Purple fingers

A cat in the window

There was a tree back there

Behind that nightmare

Knotted

Dead figs

Flies and tiny black ants

Back when I used to eat figs

my father drank 

Wrecked the car

and slashed his ear

How they say to not look back

Sure to bring a heart attack

Back when I used to eat figs

I called him Jesus

Begged for semblance

Begged for solutions 

That year Jim died

and St. Helen blew

Gone, the staggering fisherman

Gone, the lake

Handful of spirits

covered in dust

Back when I used to eat figs

my mother cried

So did the neighborhood

Under the smog

Under the gun

How they say the things you lack

Sure to bring a heart attack

Jude

As it turns out I jog by where it happened. When I heard about it on the radio it didn’t hit me that it was that indoor swap meet. The glass building that’s on the corner. I bought a pair of shoes there once. When I was a kid my uncle would take me to a swap meet way out by the mountains. He was always drunk, kept a small bottle in his back pocket. He’d buy tools. Hammers and nails. Once he bought a box of chicks, saying they were going to give him scrambled eggs. I don’t know if they ever did. I loved him. He died when I was a kid.

“If you want to stay the weekend you have to work,” I remember him saying, a trapdoor spider crawling over his thick dirty hand. It was early morning. His face was alive. “Got to pick my worms.”

The radio said he was a local man. Married with a kid. They got the guy that did it. They found the knife. It doesn’t look good for him. It doesn’t look good at all.

They must have got one of those pressure washers to pick up the blood. There’s not a sign of it. You wouldn’t know anything happened if you didn’t know. There’s a little shrine on the side of the building now. I guess he just bought some candles, prayed to one of those saints like my father.

“He was a victim of mistaken identity,” the voice on the radio said.

It also said services will be held this Saturday.

Riverside

The two stinkbugs found some seats at the bar. They already had a good buzz going, their antennas floating lazily in the cool air. They ordered a couple of beers. Mr. V’s was the happening bar in town. Nice crowd. Cute bartenders. The kitchen was great, made a hell of a philly.

“You can’t break up and go back,” Pete explained. “That shit leads to regret. I know. Just move on.”

“She said she changed,” JC said. “And who said anything about going back?”

“Oh, god. Houston, we have a fag on our hands. When was the last time you talked to her?”

“Yesterday.”

“Jesus.”

JC couldn’t get her off his mind. Jodi. Jodi Hoff. Crazy ass. Big tits. A dynamo in bed. She came into JC’s life and worked him over. She knew the game. He didn’t. She got his pecker, then his heart, and then everything else that came with it including his wallet. By the time she was done with his sorry ass his savings account was dead and stinking, his confidence was shot out, and his heart was sick and barely alive. And worst of all: he was in love.

They played some pool. Pete was a good pool player. Something his dad taught him. Just one of the two things his father passed along. The other was having bad luck with women. In Pete’s wake hung long, sad pictures of failed relationships. Memories that weren’t good ones. Sometimes it was his fault. Sometimes it wasn’t. Didn’t matter. It was all him. He was born under a bad sign. He was born on the wrong night. Something was amiss.

Pete’s last girl broke it off because she had to move out of town to take care of her sick father. But her father wasn’t sick. Nor did he live out of town. In fact, he was in great health, doing yoga, eating tasty salads, and living it up in a gated community right down the road from Pete’s apartment. A month after she packed up and moved he ran into her at the dollar store with a basket full of miscellaneous shit. Fortune cookies. Candy. Two Jesus candles.

“So, did you even move?” he asked skeptically.

“You’ll never believe it,” she said, raising her eyes. “It was a miracle. He’s fine. But I’m still moving to Riverside in a couple of weeks. I have a job lined up and everything. I’m so excited.”

Then he ran into her at the movies. By this time he heard she had a boyfriend.

“How’s Riverside?”

“You know how things go,” she said glumly. “The economy. Hiring freeze. Maybe next month.”

Pete and JC stepped out into the hot desert night. Stars swept across the black sky. A grasshopper was passed out in the middle of the parking lot, one wing pointing up to the moon. A group of ants were playing grabass trying to rip each other’s legs off. Pete’s phone rang. It was the new girl. She was pretty, newly divorced. The only problem (he recognized) was that she was a Gemini. He knew better. He’d been down that road. But he was too high to heed the math.

“All right,” Pete said, stamping out his cigarette, trying to get straight. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t.”

“I won’t,” said JC, ready to jump in the fire once again.

i should have written you a poem

you were right:
i should have written you a poem
scratched something out
in that notebook full of traffic
and bad dirt

put out a few lines
sneak in a rhyme
declare my love,
tell you thanks
and that it's all right

tell you happy birthday
tell you

(as you walk away)

my
oh
my

i should have written you a poem
called up a siren
put it in stone
talk of flowers and fame
talk of staggering and grace
and the fall of white lace

talk of shine
of yours and what's mine
talk of paris,
spokane
and of lives wrapped up in vine

you were right:
i should have written you a poem

next time i will

Atticus Morales

Baby, let’s have a son
We’ll name him Atticus
Atticus Morales
No, not after that Atticus
But the other one

And we’ll love him dearly
Feed him fried beans and indie TV
We’ll open up fat books
And songs with hooks
We’ll train him right
Tonight and every night

And you can show him chick shit
The zodiac
The Oprah
And I’ll show him football
And fists
Rusted knives and beer

And he’ll be captain of the team
The lead guitar player
Banging Kelly, Shelly, and Sally
And the gods will smile and say his name
for all my brothers to hear:

“Atticus, you kick ass.”

And we’ll feel blessed
And we’ll say it’s so
As roses fall from the sky
Over our shoulders
Passed our trampy street
The envy of so many it’s fucking sick

So what do you say, baby?
Me
You
Atticus Morales
Half Mexican and the five
or six things you got going

Atticus Morales
A/tti/cus Morales

She Wanted Diamonds

She wanted diamonds

She wanted things

Like kisses, lore

Rhymes

Little shoes

The color blue

She wanted

I did

She wanted

I didn’t

I remember like 

an old dungeon tale

Some Goth

Drama

Otranto

High tides

Hard knights

Clanking chains

were all to blame

She wanted to call in sick,

bad sleep

Some land, some sun

Come to my house

in a horse-drawn jalopy

I found you, she said

Like a nickel, suck your pickle

So, I get to keep you, right?

Right?

Keep you like a king,

a snake

Feed you on wine,

tiny white mice

And that’s how it was

And so it was

As old as a ghost

We lasted three years, 

a thousand bottles, and two months

Spiders

We used to catch spiders
Along the hills
Hunkered in tunnels
The smog, the fire

I can see his face
Young
Eyes still full
He was my dad
The shadow on the dirt

Years of want
Of love
Or death
(if that’s what it has to be then I’ll take it)
And anything else
Anything yours
The torture was too much

Too much for happiness
Too much to make it

And now
The hills are quiet
Slanted
The spider sleeps

I miss you today
Hunkered down
Doing this

Morning Report

When Sunday brings this

To my skin, to these walls

I know what I missed

One second, one look

I passed it by, went her way

Of all my mistakes

What I didn't know

The story, the tilling land

The sound in the room

Is what brings Sunday

The tug of her memory 

Next time I'll be there

23

Angel Guardian

On my desk, the tin cross

I'm clean once again

And the TV flick

The hum of this empty room

I chew on these pills

Just one more, just two

For those things I never knew

I rethink the day

Claim the load, the blame

The long gone and dusty name

I love you, I do

Piles

And those backyard poems

Buried like crickets and girls

Make the dirt my home

Dust

I came here with the dust

With the soon-to-be gambler,

the dancer

The married couple 

on their last stand

I made it crawling 

through cactus thorns

Old girlfriends

and dead scorpions

I ordered a beer

and then another

I heard cards smack

and coins drop

I heard good things,

Devil speak

I turned around: there she was

I came here to kiss 

those pink lights

Snapping out a cheap 

magnified dream

Women

Song

Whiskey

The voices said

So, I tried all three

Had a smoke

Stumbled home and fell asleep

The Rifleman

They said he came 

out of smoke

Two-syllable name

Wicked eye

A myth

A manchild

Gnashed teeth

A rifle

Rumbled the hillside

Took its town,

its stones

Shot it down

Burned it down

He knew the Devil

Smelled like fire

He died in the desert

Ate up by a pack of dogs

That’s what I heard

He was Mexican

Son of sad Ranchero

Was seen on a bus leaving town 

with a white woman

A manchild

Gnashed teeth

A pile of dead birds 

and songs at his feet

The Rifleman

Disappeared

"Has anybody seen Paul?" Michael asked. "I know he likes to take off for a couple of days here and there, but it's been like four days. I'm getting worried."

"Don't worry," the mother said. "You guys are that age. You leave. You find girlfriends. Jobs. Other places to live. It happened to me. Happens to everyone."

"I know. Everyone just seems to be leaving all at once. Andy's gone. Laura's gone. Michelle's gone. I heard she was working that two story on Peach Street. Must be a lot going on over there."

"I really like David's girlfriend," the mother said, changing the subject, knowing what she knew. "I'm so glad she moved in. She likes to bake. I like that. She made chocolate cake the other day. Did you get a chance to try it? I'm not a big fan of chocolate cake, but I'll take it. I love her peanut butter cookies."

They sat in silence for a while before Michael excused himself.

"Be careful out there," the mother said. "Keep your eyes peeled."

"I know," he said, tired of hearing her going on and on about keeping his eyes peeled, to not let his emotions get the best of him, to think.

Michael made the usual rounds. Didn't find too much but came home satisfied. He found his spot and fell asleep. He dreamt of Paul. He didn't look well. His eyes were dull, his shoulders slumped. His neck couldn't hold his head which kept rolling around. 

"Time will tell," he told Michael and disappeared in smoke.

That night Michael watched the girlfriend eating a sandwich. She was haunting. Pale white skin. Jet-black eyes. She made a phone call.

"Oh, I'm taking care of the fucking problem," she said, her black eyes scanning the kitchen. "It's disgusting."

David walked into the kitchen. He sat down and lit a cigarette. He looked at the base of the refrigerator where he set one up. 

"I moved some of them around, " he said. "Put one behind the hutch. One by the sliding door. Who knows where they're coming in from."

They turned off the kitchen light and Michael darted from his hiding spot. He went to the trashcan. Zipped under the pantry door and shit in his regular spot. He went to the bathroom down the hall. On his way back to the kitchen something caught his nose. It overwhelmed him. He took a few quick steps in its direction but stopped and thought for a moment, his nose nervously bobbing in the air. But the scent was too much and overpowered the warning and his nose lead him to the refrigerator. He licked the top of the peanut butter. Snap. He couldn't see. He didn't know what was happening. Something heavy was crushing his neck. He tried to pull himself out, his feet frantically scrapping against the wood and tile. He stopped to catch his breath. The air swirled with panic. He tried one last time, his neck finally giving in. 

"There goes another one," Michael told Shannon after hearing the trap close. "Another dead mouse."

(untitled)

And now I’m here by smile

The day is warm

And how it feels so good

Her traffic passed me by

I’m driving through

And now if feels so right

Bye my lady, come again your home

Will be your leaving

Dam the river, praise the day

I hope I’ll be forgiven

The running had me blind

The bottled room

If I could sleep awhile

The patience of the land

Where I will bloom

I’m coming back for good

Hold me baby, welcome to your home

We won’t be leaving

Sing the river, praise the day

We are now forgiven

My Funeral

At my funeral there will be flowers and herbs

Chrysanthemums and coriander

Firewitch and oregano

Thorny seasons and venting volcanoes

At my funeral there will be skeletons

Painted in purple and lime-green

Robed and naked

Playing guitar and drinking beer

Bones of hope and sadness

Lies and superstition

One will say I was her lover

One will say I was her brother

Another will bring a gun

To make sure what was done was actually done

At my funeral I’ll miss my ma and pa

Winks and water

Beds and stones

Jesus around the collar

And all the miracles I was sold

At my funeral I’ll wear a crown

Buttons and belt

Crows and dirt

And take my final rest among those flowered skirts 

Cincinnati

She slipped on the other heel. A childhood memory: The park. The cake and red punch. The new shoes. The shiny silver buckle.

“Do you like your shoes, Lily?” her father asked, his face happy and young. “They’re very pretty.”

Right before the ice storm turned the town to stone they laid him off. Most thought the jobs would come back. They prayed. That winter was colder than anyone remembered. Everything was gray and locked in place. Her father waited patiently. He fixed things in the garage, was seen doing the dishes. He listened for the phone. Then one day he picked up the bottle after eighteen years without a drop (he put down the drink the day Harbor Freight hired him).

“That job was supposed to bury me,” he told her, a pint sitting between his legs. “Supposed to pay for your wedding.”

The next winter wasn’t as cold. But when the first snow fell Harbor Freight was no longer and he wasn’t around to shovel the driveway and lay down the salt.

Another memory: Packing his things. A silver watch. A gold ring with a green stone. Some books. His scuffed work boots.

“I’m so sorry,” Uncle Gil told her outside the church, his eyes glossed over, going how his brother went. “It’s all in god’s plan.”

At one time Gil lived next door with his second wife. Jean. Monkey face. Saucer lips. They did two things: They drank and argued. Once Jean was out on the balcony drunk and naked, her big tits taking in the warm Kentucky sun. Another time the cops came and took him away.

“I want my lawyer!” he yelled as they walked him out, feet dragging, hands cuffed behind his back. “Jean! Jean! You bitch! You better take care of my goddamn cat!”

“Lily,” someone said, bringing her back.

She looked in the mirror. The dress was white despite the fact that she lost her virginity the summer before. “The Cincinnati Summer” is what she called her handwritten memoir. She documented everything.  The nervous drive to his house. The cigarettes. The hurts-so-good. He reminded her of her father. Even wore the same cologne.

“Wish you were here,” she said and fastened the last buckle.

Violin

And so there you are

In your shirt and shoes

In all those colors and looks

That I never knew

Blue

Black

Off-red

Half-sad

I came here by bus

My hands and such

By heart and dog

Now those things are gone

Miles of clean

Those roads now long

Curved and turned black

Now sing my song:

Slurring violins

Hallow drums

Snapped strings

And all those shifting notes in between

There you are

And here I am

My dust

My regret 

Little Dog

The way she saw it she had to dance. She had no other choice. At least that was her excuse. Aaron was out of work. Her chihuahua, Punch, needed a new toy, and the bills were piling up on the table.

She wore the tightest skirt she had and headed out the door. Aaron was sitting on the porch three hours into his new job which was watching the neighbors and taking blurry notes on their comings and goings.

“How’s work, Aaron?” she asked, her perfume heavy and drifting towards Barstow.

“Slow,” he slurred, a pint of vodka in his hand. “Not much action going on. The Addams family is arguing. Something about the cat shitting all over the living room. Doesn’t look good for the cat. So, I take it you’re serious about stripping.”

“Exotic dancer.”

“Stripper.”

“Asshole.”

Brenda pulled into Spanky’s. She was nervous, her stomach tumbling like dice. A thin girl wearing thick make-up was outside smoking a cigarette. She stared at Brenda and blew a hit of smoke out of the side of her mouth like Popeye.

Brenda did a jagged awkward dance in front of Max the club owner. She was green, didn’t know how to move her body. In time, he thought. He liked her tits. He was a tit man. That and whiskey.

“You can start tonight,” he said, staring at her dark nipples. “Do you have a man?”

“Yeah. Punch.”

“Punch?”

“Chihuahua. Six months old.”

“You’re gonna like it here,” he said, closing his eyes, seeing the bottle tilt. “It’s all here.”