2 poems

Orion

He’s strange enough to knit corduroy scarves
and overdo pages in his memoir.
When did wild rumors start muddying
linen curtains draped over the panes
of glass that described sex practices and
a growing anger towards young women?

His friend Patrick telephoned the women
in the neighborhood, reassured one scathed
group that the street artist was depressed and
deformed by fiscal abuse. “He’s like noir
by trade. Dark fallacies helped sell the pain.”
They misunderstood a boy muddying

his starched jeans during scouts, dying
to be picked first for a pervert. Women
watched curiously through their window panes
as he wrapped everything in plastic; scarves,
books, dishware. It’s all written in his memoir.
Like aluminum cans, he looked bent and

fragile. I wanted to open him and
spill out his contents, find those things dying
and mend them, to be a page of memoir,
and change all his perceptions of women.
When we met I screamed like a schoolgirl scarved
in taffeta. Split by age, I still died

to hold his bald head. When I write memoir
I may include that time we fed our pains
over a bread basket. The women
he left was what attracted me and
what put my nerves on edge. Like mud, dying
our clothes a certain yellow or scarves

tightly woven I picked at his memoir,
left sheaves of white paint over panes.
I was so curious what women







On a recent trip to the mall

I wanted to kill
the band of octagon blondes,
those women waiting
amongst a sea of dressing rooms,
dim like schools
of dolphins trapped in fishnets.

I went in to buy a ring
but realized I needed a man.
So I found the closest clerk
at the Orange Julius stand
and asked him for my hand.

Pardon me sir
I wanted to know if you’re looking
for a partner?
If my skin tight jeans
and bare breast
make you snarl?

To my chagrin
I was not his type
And thought what a sin
to be part of this bouquet
of crazed singles, a tourniquet
of sticky apricot
bruised fruit.