if waking up,
I stop explaining
Tony Soprano’s outburst
to his aggravated
henchmen.
Taking Place
Once we liked the conspicuous
but constrained,
the push-up bra
under the shirtwaist,
a small bow
at the throat,
the appearance
of a struggle
toward the diminutive,
the punctum.
–
The slender
second hand
jerking forward
as if helpless,
making its same sound.
–
We might stand
in a thicket
where a battle had
taken place
and be thrilled
by the far-off roar
of traffic
Easily
The models
in the Gentlemen’s Club ad
are posed
with pink mouths slack,
eyes narrowed
to slits.
Show me stunned resentment—
the way
the world absorbs
an insult
it won’t easily
forget
Partly
In this ad
for Newfoundland,
an old woman
steps onto the porch
of the lone house
on a remote cove
and shakes a white sheet
at a partly cloudy sky
as if
–
Matched burgundy berries
on adjacent stems,
perfect ear bobs,
with no one
wearing them
Parallel Worlds Theory
1
When a new bar called
The Air-Conditioned Lounge
opens and its sign
is in old-time cursive
this is ironic because
the building
is a concrete box
and the sign
looks like a gift card,
no,
this is ironic
because its claim
is true
but does nothing
to distinguish it.
Either this sign
is a reversal
of the many
novel yet dubious
claims we endure
or it expresses
guarded nostalgia
for a time
when it was that easy
to be cool.
2
Those branches
are good
because they remind me
of others.
The others
are the same
but small
Word Problems
If a fat man
with one earlobe distended
by a large ring
and a thin man
in a heavy neck chain
sit together
checking email
The real is made up
of things minus
appearance
near eucalyptus strands
of green crescents
and their shadows—flighty
half-moons
while the soul
is made up
of appearance
minus things
