Please


I wake up,
eye-to-eye with the cat’s anus.
He’s purring on my chest.
Why me, oh, Lord?
Like face time
with a rusty washer.
I hear good things
about the ungulates,
their table manners, their
clean plates.  My kind
of animal, sweet-smelling,
modest, not like cats
weaving between your legs,
scent glands under their tails,
rubbing until you smell
like them, safe enough
to love.  Take my species,
for example.  I’m a person,
p-e-r-s-o-n.  Before
the plague of white-eyes,
each nation called itself
“the people.”  Take.
my species.  Please.

​



Amulet 


The vet calls it “extrusion” & prescribes
an antibiotic, room-temperature, as if the cat 
cares.  He’ll lose that fang in a few weeks.
I ask the vet if she knows some place 
that could gold-plate the tooth & hang it
on a silver chain, an amulet against
this evil century.  She shrugs & glances
away as if I’m a Scientologist or mentally ill.
O, ye of little faith!!  The Mai Mai rebels
believed holy water changed the bullets
of the government troops into rain.
They brandished spears, wearing nothing
but shower caps on their heads & around
their necks, bath plugs for amulets.  
Easy pose not easy no more.  Nothing not 
easy no more.  But come, hang this cat’s tooth 
around your neck & see how much it helps.  
The Mai Mai rebels?  20% almost survived.





American Ingenuity


After a buffalo burger
& some butter lettuce, 
triple-washed, I’m ready 
to refinance the house. 
I can’t sleep nights,
coveting the sudden wealth
of someone like Ragged Dick 
the bootblack, a fictional 
character, but still. . . .

I’d vote Socialist.  I can’t sleep,
concocting get-rich-quick schemes:
a great-tasting colonoscopy prep.
Or Hasta Yoga, copywriting,
like Mr. Bikram, ancient asanas,
the ones that stretch wrist & fingers,
yoga for signatories.  I’d vote 
Socialist.  My best idea yet, 
lavender-scented formaldehyde.


All three poems originally appeared in Get Serious: New and Selected Poems (Chax Press, 2013).