The wet smoldering scent
of burning dogwood
leaves

reminds me of the hours
spent in the garden
kissing

the soiled palms of
a woman tousled
from work.

There are plenty of diseases around, take
an American motel room, shine an
ultraviolet on wall switches,
pillows, see seminal fluid
& mucus splotched like
a Jackson *******,
these are seen,

now,  flick a light & open your eyes
& recognize the overt sickness of
racism, spread  like jam
across American
bread, widely
viewed,
unseen.

I like poems that smell of milk
that is about to curdle. Not with
enough bacteria to **** you, but
enough to make you wince
and heave. Spoiled
sufficiency you

want to apologize to God
or at least explain every
despicable thing you
knew of and did not

stop.

I  am knocking on  doors,
open  them and hear me
shout across the U.S.A. :

I may be black as blindness
or rainbow hue,
but I am as
American,

as you.

See, I am  looking
for the best lay
of the land,

between two hillsides
beyond concrete, asphalt,
where

there are only
red dirt roads
few tire tracks,

a place of birdsong
gut laughter,

hard work.

Jingle click
keys, hinge
squeak;

step on  five
gallon bucket,
hoist out

window, disappear
Durham Avenue,
walk.

Eva comes home from work to where there are many flies
and slaps my brother side-headed because he left the back
door open,  she is bovine heavy and limps to close it.  We eat

Chef Boyardee Spaghetti and it is soothing like peanut butter
fudge or Pepsi-Cola.  Eva says do the dishes up boys,  goes
to bed and cries.  Me and brother go to sleep and I dream

of a burning house.

Let me unfold you
         completely.

White cotton sheet
         beneath the p.m. sun
         draped on a line
         long and free
         flowing.

Sun downs
         encased in an ink sky
         black to our vision
         it will again rise
         tomorrow.

Unfold you again,
         completely.

Woman ****** fuzz does not puzzle me,
but stumps  men near and far.

They claim hair is best on Bonobos;
I view that a lesser stance.

One dozen migratory Black-and-white Warblers lay
like fallen piano keys on the sidewalk in front
of a 14-story glass constructed building;
I watched as the janitor swept
them into the street.

I’ve born four children, one still dead
another taken by 11th-week aspiration,
proves I'm randy enough for most.

Salt of the earth rural and *****,
looking for time with a man
who’s skinny or capable.

I’ve impatient hips; show me
which one you claim.

The man who sleeps in the diner's back booth
will not care  if your mother suffers  from
plantar diabetic neuropathy, or that your
cousin read **** and gulps *****.  

No,  trivial matters will not worry him
because he ****** himself dormant
after he awakens, that will be
his primary concern.

You probably think this poem is about
Lisbon, Portugal, where women
dangle your imagination like
a necklace of sun-dried
currants. No,

Lisbon, Iowa, a town twenty-two
miles removed from the 21st
century, where I stopped
for coffee, flipped eggs
and a place to ****
on my way home

from  god what  a day;
a man ordered a plate
of Rice Krispie bars
and tea—shuffled

his wallet for ten minutes,
made me nervous
like he was on
Thorazine;

it was the last
time I visited
Lisbon.

I cup a Pall Mall, it is 10:30 p.m.,
December & Montana
frigid.

The store’s back window is unlocked,
I take white bread, ham
& mustard.

Hunker curbside, make sandwiches
& eat, I am less

hungry, cold
& 14-years
old.

Some are lissome, jowly,
blossomed or pocked,  teeth

of old horses—eyes white as flour,
a few clubfoot with sisters

pregnant as October gourds.  Not
Norman Rockwell’s Americans,

but they are us and live in lopsided
bungalows with leaky roofs,

heaved sidewalks, bare
refrigerators.

Basil, paprika, cold Hungarian goulash,
bleu cheese and stale cinnamon
coffee cake dominate
the taste of  your
mouth and skin;

it’s not because you are
slovenly that pulls me
into you, I am alone.

I walk out the back door and see a doe
rise from bluegrass as two bucks
follow her into the timber,
she looks back and flags
her tail at the sound of
of my breath.

You have a cute southern drawl
she said.

You are not brilliant but I like your ***
was the best  I could offer.

You from Mississippi?
No, southern Iowa.

Not much difference in men
all weighed and measured;

this, we both
understood.

In less than a year you digested
a Puerto Rican baseball player,
certified horse inseminator,
disc  jockey, your sister’s
father-in-law,  a woman
named  Genevieve
                 and me.

Not much left after the pan
is boiled dry; memories,
residue and grit.

Knelt not like candles
lit for celebration but
driven like needles
into pine by
hammer.

Nothing remains,
not  one  rhizome,
stem, or hairy root

travels, shoots, or buries
itself during barren  fall;
only  impending winter

resides in my garden
this unpredictable season,
and it is waiting for spring.

Nothing in this alley to crow
about—backboard and bent hoop
leans against an old refrigerator.

Over at   McMillin’s place
bags of garbage pile atop
a turquoise Chrysler.  

I’d give the family a pick
and shovel   if they bury
their old basset after it dies;

it’ll probably keel,
the first cold day
of 2017.  

My boots like this alley
even if my eyes don’t,
it hasn’t seen

a snowplow this winter
and, why should
it?

Cur pillaged
garbage bag

Tampons strewn
cans licked

Rotten pumpkins
beneath canoe

Neighbors argue
redneck chatter

Dead squirrel
atop  car

Wild garlic
crooked fence

Open door
pour coffee.

The thought of loving

Brings me to you

Who I carry in my pocket

Like a needle

*** could be joyous

Or, anticlimactic   .

The broken limb missed my uncle’s rose trellis
landed not far from his turquoise bungalow

two feet from a Plymouth Valiant
flush atop his domestic

rabbit cage.  Four rabbits
crushed, another

greasy-eyed,  still
alive—uncle popped

its head against a bur
oak, the sixth

limped out in
concentric circles

far away, never
looked back.

In a grapefruit box bassinet a squabble
of flesh, side room a four-year-old with
forehead on her brother’s shoulder-he sleeps
an arm around a one-eyed sock monkey;
Pamper on the boy’s ***. TV sounds like
a  goose, telephone jangles, answers
a mama, she say hello Mr., not glad
you called.

Why do they die?
The healthy ones against
wind rain, snow and disease.
It died. Fell over with a groan.
It was just a red oak; I loved it.

He said his Christmas Eve was good
in his recliner, TV cranked,
drapes closed,

bottle of Nyquil in one hand,
remote control, in the other,

waiting

for NBC News
to end and football
to begin.

I need to know
if you think of me;

winter is coming
and it often arrives
with unexplainable sorrow.

The old ****** slowly digs holes
plowing with precision
he places acorns

under peony bushes
behind the old
windmill,
each

day he wearily climbs
the den  tree
curling into
his nest

as the neighborhood
tomcat watches.

On our third date you forgot
your diaphragm;
the infant died,

it was best you said,
babies are wormy
cats, always sick.

I  think of you
when women
with high

heeled black boots
walk past and their
***** jut like Scottish hills;

you are gone but I feel you
in my arm crook, still,
as winter’s bird.

I am like winter’s  bluebirds surviving
January instead of migrating
to  Guadalajara with kin

to eat  larvae & hover flowered
women with ***** feet who
breastfeed their

babies with gelatinous
eyes and coo
coo

coo, at the occasional
sight of the bluest
in flight.

We  do not have to know the man who  walks
three hours northside to southside  of town
past green bluegrass lawns, over white
picket fences, around chains of
snapping curs and through
vegetable patches to his
home willed him by
his dead mama;

knowing him is not necessary,
helping him is our responsibility.