Mention the Weather

At all exits we announce the weather, verifying expectation and aligning perception; each utterance a well-worn habit’s slip.

It’s a national tic; months ago we lamented the wall of sweat simmering off the asphalt, each in turn: the heat, the heat, the heat. Now, half an ellipse through the dark we clip in kind with sharp shudders: the cold, the cold, the cold.

At the uncompromising sky’s behest, platitudes move like intention’s lingua franca. Not so long ago we knew each other; our hearts did not need to learn these words under the greased hand of polite adulthood. Our habits are the same, but we are new. We are bundles of disparate momentum.

(kimchi poem #1)

Underground People

I like your loud music

You make it easy to read omens in license plates

and furry, pepper-studded rain-heads.

There is so much I want to say. Maybe we should stop.

Have something to eat instead. Buy bathing suits,

or masturbate in separate rooms while we read

aloud the Russians scored by your fathers’

underhanded commentary.

Don’t tell me anything while we repose, not until

you learn something worth the page it’s printed on.

When you finally do, we can tip ourselves

back into the van under falser pretenses,

approach our limit. Not a boundary,

but a mathematical kiss that may never take place.

Here’s hoping that it does.

That you’ll swing from that parabola

like a tire over a swollen Virginia summer

and you’ll splash, surprised and silent

into my pink wet mouth.

--Will appear in the April issue of Pank Magazine