Even during–even if it during
Popovich pushed past pastel where
Friday’s palate the taste of plastic on cloth
damp paper left folded the crowd in cubicles
along the rails my thighs reached out drying close
a glove to the hand in lines of ladies with cigarettes
charcoal stiffening between a charge wired
to a pen doctor swelling lips slit kissing on her porch
the albino pooch its skin torn like a glove up and
into the canal where she started the water running
in the sink hair stretching into the greyhound’s teeth
its skin risking the impact it had taken
This poem originally appeared in The Grave of the Great Alley of Clarity Cats, an anthology of poetry written by Mike Giardina. The complete the anthology is available below:
Table of contents:
- Sun Shine Body
- On arrival in a lot of no civilization and plenty of letters,
- The unable to deliver
- An upwards slanted walk
- A familiar voice
- Those who have a standard way of going
- Left each chapter within us
- Warm smile not found in her cigarette
- To regain his composure for figures
- Food for rejecting his feet
- Even during--even if it during
- Lying on the floor, stretched after stir
- A soldier frames the wall
- A step by boulder
- A train by life station
- I was able to take the old north of town
- Fledgling
- Job
- Bradbury's closet
- A mummy's leggings
- Sipping mother's sweat
- Flash like an individual there
- I realize the skyline while playing catch with mother's death
- Running far away from a city, to return a week later
- Dysmorphexia
- Carried the clock over
- We have been meeting years
- Chocolate Italian princess
- Champion of Years
- "How much longer will I be able to remount the mothproof thrusting..."
- Over as rivers are over