Cavity

Heartache

like toothache

comes in spasms

when you least expect it

A jolt like waking

from a dream of falling

shatters your ribcage

and you have to sit with it

until it subsides.

Breathe, because

you can still do that.

Stay away from anything sweet

like that candy you once enjoyed

before decay set in.

Eventually

you won't even feel it

but it still pulsates

with a will of its own

like a forgotten appliance--

So next time, be more careful

what you bite into.

Election Night

The choice was easy,

it was either hope or the pit

and we chose elevation.

The sky seemed closer then

or perhaps we were taller,

not stooped from weight

of concrete survival.

It was summer in November,

seventy degrees, warm enough

for victory barbeques,

warm enough to stand for hours

on Michigan Avenue.

Cars circled the block endlessly

drunken women on the roofs,

waving flags, that for the first time

didn't belong to the opposition.

Cell phone updates

announced the sweep of states

one after another after another

until there came a point

when there was no need to count,

the race was already won.

It was at that moment

when the crowd finally moved forward

with the fervor of a penned dog,

an animal that had been caged for years.

We stood in a field in Grant Park

in front of an enormous screen,

the loser conceded gracefully,

the winner stood behind bulletproof glass.

Nothing would ever be so clear again,

the glass became caked with dirt,

as we always knew it would.

Still, it was good to forget

our nihilism, our strange belief

that none of it belonged to us,

that we didn't deserve it anyway.

Though we paraded in our shirtsleeves

it wouldn't be more than a week

until the winter coats came out of the closet.

We must have sensed this,

to have given up so easily.

We conceded defeat, without grace

as if defeat was our birthright.

We lay down our slogan-covered banners,

went back to our homes and locked the doors,

numbly returned to our day jobs,

our televisions, our computers, and our cars,

as if we had never gone anywhere.

Astrology 101

Saturn will arrive early for the party

and end up reorganizing your files

He will tell you exactly how to correct your posture

why the gluten in your pasta is bad for you

and where the weeds in your garden are located

He's a pain in the ass

and you can't wait for him to leave

but, though you grit your teeth, you must admit

that everything he says is true.

Neptune will show up with the drugs

wearing a sexy costume that shows off his body

but obscures most of his face

Later, he'll seduce you in the hot tub

after reading you a few lines of poetry

He'll kiss your cheek before he leaves

and promise to return

next time he's in the neighborhood

and it won't be until he's gone

that you realize he left you a shit-covered valentine

and told you it was chocolate.

Word Salad

Word salad is when you hear bits of sentences
but none of the words make sense
you explained to me earnestly.
We were probably smoking bowls
in the front seat of your purple 1972 Gremlin
the floor littered with stems and fast food bags
and the occasional foraging parasite.
Drivers screamed at you as they passed.
It didn't matter what you were doing—
parking, making a right turn, changing the radio;
people were always ready to kick your ass for it.
On the last day of 1979
we drove from one end of Chicago to the other
listening to "Free Bird" and "Stairway to Heaven"
while trying to stuff a foot-long bong
underneath the passenger seat.
Three months earlier, you woke up in my bed,
and announced you had decided to become bisexual
because it seemed like the healthy way to be
Then you asked me if I wanted to take a road trip.
You wanted me to show you all the places
I'd told you about, but you had never seen.
We went to the farmhouse north of Springfield
where my stepfather committed suicide two years earlier
We climbed through the window,
crept through the rooms like criminals, staring at the walls
and then drove ninety miles to visit
my bisexual friend Michael in his trailer in Urbana.
Michael was like a Russ Meyers character come to life
or a caricature of Oscar Wilde,
living on a diet of gourmet food and LSD and group sex.
Afterwards you confessed that you didn't like men
but there was a moment,
with one of your hands on my breast
and the other on Michael's cock
when you were completely aware of your power.
Mostly, you were unsure of yourself.
I called you a spoiled suburban boy
with delusions of world domination.
Obsessed with Napoleon when you were in high school,
you had dreams of joining the military
and dropping bombs like anonymous letters.
You couldn't understand why I hated you
even though we were such close friends.
One night we fucked in the turret
of an empty Victorian building
and I almost loved you in a distant kind of way
but you ruined it by telling me
I only showed my feelings during sex
and was an ice princess the rest of the time.
The last time I saw you
we smoked a bowl under a freeway overpass
and promised to keep in touch, but we didn't.
You joined the air force, but
they wouldn't let you specialize in nuclear warfare
because of your marijuana habit
As a consolation prize, they said
you could become an air traffic controller
I liked to think of you making two hundred thousand a year
directing international air traffic with a cocktail in one hand
and a fat joint in the other
feeling completely aware of your power,
but the fact is that you got a medical discharge
for alcoholism and schizophrenia
after less than a year.
The government talked constantly to you
through your dental fillings
conveying urgent, garbled messages
that didn't make any sense.
You returned to your Midwestern family,
who corralled you in the den, like a dog.
They taught you to play a mean game of bridge,
while you chain-smoked and tried not to drink.
It was impossible for you to live alone
without somebody watching you.
One morning your parents found you on your kitchen floor,
naked and covered with wounds.
No one knew if you'd been beaten
or simply had fallen repeatedly.
You survived a coma and two brain surgeries
only to die in your bed a year later from a fire
caused by an unextinguished cigarette,
leaving behind two children, three ex-wives
and a pair of secretly relieved parents.
Your mother still lives in downstate Illinois
chain-smoking while attached to an oxygen tank
wondering why you were so self-destructive.
I'd rather think of the two of us
spray-painting the cement wall behind the Adler Planetarium
or hitchhiking to New Orleans in January,
being chased by angry truckers, and escaping.
I'd like to feel that we both escaped,
but I guess only one of us did
and I'd like to think that you found your power
once you let go of your body,
but your body is probably in a rural Illinois cemetery
with a bucket of artificial flowers on your head.
Not even death can stop you from being a loser,
but at least it makes it easier for others to ignore you.

Thrill-Seeker

She likes to take a running leap

off the twenty-foot wall, into the sandbox—

land on her ass, roll like an insect

and then crawl up the ladder to the wall again.

She says it’s the most fun,

the midair uncertainty—then the feeling

of relief as body connects with earth.

One day, she takes her best friend to the wall.

Her friend withholds her boldness

with aristocratic contempt.

She secretly finds the girl’s eagerness

to bolt into the void to be a sign

that she is not as smart as she likes to think.

The friend will never jump,

not in a month, or a year.

The girl says it's the easiest thing,

and nothing bad could possibly happen--

and to prove it, she'll take one more leap

to show her friend how it should be done.

“Nothing bad can happen!” she repeats

and she catapults into mid-air,

cheerfully flings caution skyward like confetti

and lands with her kneecaps in her face.

Blood spills into the hard sand

from a deep gash above her left eye.

The girl laughs, admits to being wrong,

and then bursts into tears.

It's going to be a long walk home;

still early morning, and the girl's parents

are sleeping off their hangovers.

Won't they be surprised when they awaken

to see their daughter, standing above them

with a wet paper towel over her face

delicately splashed with diluted blood.

There will be a long trip to the emergency room

before they've even had their morning coffee.

The girl will sit under fluorescent lighting

while the surgeon reattaches her flesh

with deft, indifferent needle strokes,

like an Amish grandmother sewing an apron.

She's stoic now, refusing to cry

because her parents expect her to be brave

and will surely punish her if she isn't.

Her friend sits beside her,

vowing never to take such chances,

glad that she never left the ground

but the girl, behind her closed eyes

flinches from the needle's prodding,

and dreams of the next time she will jump.