EASTERN EUROPE

Drink orange juice

Smoke a cigarette

Pay a parking ticket.

Take all of the wedding gifts

From the shelves, replace them with books

The dyslexic memories linger

In a layer of dust.

There is now

A gray photo of my Russian grandfather

Framed in skin colored wood.

I never knew him

And I love him more

Than my useless parents.

I have never travelled

Outside of these United States.

Sunday morning rolls in

With the serenity of a piano’s voice

Those tiny soft hammers

The black and white keys

The smiles of Chernobyl children

Adorn the walls

Of my otherwise

Empty little head.

TIME

My father wore one watch his entire life. The band was gold colored, scraped, It stretched around his hairy wrist Like railroad tracks, a sprig of black hair Poking through each fissure with the wisdom of a weed. The watch face was cheap glass Scratched with tiny trenches In which soldiers huddled From the angry hands That rotated only when he shook his wrist. Batteries were not needed to move the mechanisms of his time. In our living room we’re screaming And fighting, and I’m trying to hug you Squeeze your arms against your body Pin the flailing and fists from beating My oversized chest. In the bedroom, the turtle chokes to death On undigested broccoli As it’s rectum goes prolapsed. I’m shoving my fist through My rubber throat Fingering around for a word To stop the police from banging On the front door. I don’t wear a watch But I remember all of my parent’s fights And how my father chucked his watch Squarely into the kitchen wall Smashing out a chunk of pink paint And drywall. Even after all the violence stopped And the police separated us And took our statement And left us to breath heavily in the damp darkness The watch still ticked. It continued to measure time As it passed around us Leaving us behind.

KING KONG

Lumbering through the streets of downtown

Dragging my knuckles behind me

Leaving trails of blood, bone, and fur.

A sky scraper shoves its thick heel

Straight into my neck, a gloved fist into my gullet

Neon and florescent lights go fuzzy.

Everyone walking by me in monkey suits

Not one of them brave enough to go naked –

An open sewer yawns at my crushed grin.

Granules of trodden tar embedded in my palms.

A capillary thin trail of blood and mucus from my lip.

The pavement has never tasted so sweet.