a chanced encounter

original work. novel approach.

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couch series ii

photo by: georden west

subject: @porchesandpeaches

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it was my bouquet

i don’t know how to tell you my first love believed her fists were tenderizers but she battered meat like everyone else and refused to call herself a butcher so when she bloomed irises and azaleas on my knees they praised her for growing a garden and were awed by her green, green thumb.

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how's my driving?

because i'm made of bubble wrap and packing tape my arms look like cardboard boxes and i have a stomach of goose down forgive my deceptive pillow eyes and bed frame teeth my tongue is not really a mattress and my hands are not padded my body is not a moving truck and i cannot promise you safe transport.

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morrison love

you are my celestial the unbearable sweetness of it all gives me cavities these things to root out smoothest teeth and music dreading the shore a surfacing and warning of swift undertow and i am so willing to be swallowed whole.

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florist's daughter

i was built to be a corsage you picked me for the brightest nights that sneezed stardust and rhythm and new love i was your lover's wrist tracing your cheek into memory that invited your unsure dancing feet into a cerebral photo album she left out on her very first coffee table in a big city i was the scent that followed you back to your pillow a crushed lavender and honeydew sweat that treated you until morning i kissed the palms of your first and last loves creased tenderly between book pages that will always remember you.

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Leaning

I am in row sixteen lost in clouds bigger than my hometown And I am thinking how it's my lucky number Watching oil tankers cross stitch the coastline I am bent like your mother mending socks Unable to discern sky from water.

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a plea for new glasses

the bending willows are wrapped in twine scratching post for calloused hands you can always climb to the top i try to see you make it to the canopy but my eyes are not quite sharp enough and the rain demands eyelashes to be windshield wipers the roadside glare is blinding and lamplight turns to a golden orb.

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your mouth is of the morning teeth fog drifting from the blue ridge you trace tree rings on my shoulder laying mountain roots with me.

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CARVIN

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Study cheese with @porchesandpeaches

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when your favorite selfies of the year are of your cat...

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a church organist

when you breathe your lungs are an organ i can feel this universe expanding against the palm of my hand when i curl against your almost stillness because you’re never all the way still how could you be with a carillon in your chest and sometime your knees make the dinner dishes shudder with the rhythm of whatever is humming inside you it’s like you're pressing out the air of an accordion the beautiful groan of an almost something.

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Perfect little puppy cat

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for sale

our yard is a saint joseph burial ground

twenty upside down figurines scattered from mailbox to stucco porch

marking the months our house would not sell

and it always smells of cinnamon she boils in a too big pot

steaming the fake plants of the jungle kitchenette

there are lots of prayers sent to jude and measuring of square feet

and i wonder the cost of taking up too much space

for the saints to finally permeate.

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Puppy cat

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sarah and fingerprints

my coworker moved from california a year ago and is trying to find herself

doing handstands on her breaks as i flip through a magazine

i scrubbed every rock on the wall two weeks ago in gentle acid

that soaked my jeans and rubbed my skin summer strawberry

they are already covered in a powdered sugar snow of chalk

that i wipe off the back of the bathroom door nightly

we spend an hour mopping away our footprints at ten thirty sharp

tomorrow sarah will do handstands again 

and i will be paid to erase it all.