We Always Managed to Have the Same Teachers

Carl didn’t see the piñata-bashing club as I cracked him with it on the back of his dome piece, knocking him out for a solid two minutes. And I didn’t see the two massive parental hands that grabbed me from behind and spanked my learing, chubby rump until I apologized to Carl, our non-offensively biracial god and the president. “Crappy birthday to you” is an understatement. Honey-bearded Jesus and George Bush 41 just kept staring at me from behind their picture frames on the plastic, Pine-Sol-colored mantel, and I wouldn’t be getting my new Super Nintendo until the following year, when the only thing anyone really wanted to play with were Stretch Saddam dolls and Branch Davidian Big Wheels. But I would be seeing a lot more of Carl. Until the next time he touched me where it smelled funny.

5 Tent City Poems

Avant-Girl 2011 (Washington Square)

The azalea,

she said,

means temperance,

passion,

sisterhood,

good-luck drum circles

and fragility.

We waited

in her tent,

smoking.

 

Minority Report

Face it, blondebeards,

waves burned

this prairie

more than twice:

Our time is moot.

The Media Materializes as a Schaffner Film

Apelike quadrupeds

with widescreen lenses

strip us in vitro.

Time to stop drawing

prosthetic crucifixes

on the sidewalk.

PTSD is So 2007 (Rubber Bullet Sonata)

                        

“The least coolest person on TV,

more interesting

than anyone here,”

sings Private Jimmy

while we sponge

his vegetable legs.

Historical Context

When asked why he felt so compelled to douse his body in flames, the elderly monk replied, “My feet hurt.”