Paste Eater
 
Dried paste flakes on the lid’s inside,
he scrapes them under his nails
then into his mouth, makes sure the teacher
doesn’t see, but the other kids do,
watch as he dips a popsicle stick, licks
some paste off, tang on his tongue,
the long swallow. They know it’s wrong.
Don’t eat paste, chalk, paint, clay,
don’t chew erasers, rulers, pens…
but the need still stays
for the first universe, milk, nipple,
fleshy warmth crammed in, everything
mouthed whole in gulp and suck,
fingers apart or one drooled fist,
blankets, woolly toys, anything soft,
or hard when teeth cut through,
that ache to gnaw and slobber,
it’s all there, always there,
a taste for the sticky world.
 
(First published in River Styx)
 
 
Leaving the Riviera
 
Late in September, any given day,
two Finnish girls adorn
some Italian beach. Nineteen or so,
with names like Heli or Riikka,
they tan themselves all afternoon,
bikini straps tucked or tossed aside,
coconut oil smeared across towels,
in their hair. And when they order
ice cream, melon slices,
they use English tinged
with long Texas vowels
or a New Zealand whine,
depending on where they au paired.
At night they dance in the discos,
letting the French boys
buy them a drink,
maybe yielding a kiss or two,
but they walk back to their cheap room
alone, sharing a single smoke.
These girls do not count the days
until the train north, never talk
of taking packed Helsinki trams
to work, or their fathers buying vodka
by the case. For now, they make do
with the dregs of summer,
lying in the sand, bold as radiation,
begging the sun to their skin.
 
(First published in Experimental Candy)
 
 
Middles of Deserts
 
No entry, no door, no
clean line around
the drifts that twist
 
and send sand flying in the wind.
The extreme comes only
when you’re in,
 
well into the basins
floored with salt
and copper flecked rocks,
 
when temperatures
spike and plunge
and creosote lives long.
 
Think pronghorn, think hawk,
think of red dirt.
You can bask now:
 
water-like light
shining hard
in that wash of unwalked land.
 
(First published in Linebreak)