for Dana
I dream en route from St. Petersburg, Mississippi to St. Louis, Florida. My vampire lovers are precariously situated in a novel by James Hannaham. More numbers of us are vampires than originally thought. All of us. You can tell by the loose and missing skin of our teeth. Our outfits were cut out skimpily in Vs so skimpy the queen who could fly flew away. From all of it. Maybe I am she. They say I am. I want to say I told you so to one of you, in particular. What good does foresight do and who needs it when you are like me, queen vampire who can but doesn’t always fly away. Yeah, sometimes I stay. I earn a mouthful and keep it to myself. As I am. As they say I am.
•
for Topher
I wake, without reason. The television fog meets with fog on the street. No one need be judged, ever again. Harshly or on the brow of what possibly. If I open the papers first thing in the morning what becomes of my dream. If I don’t think of you what becomes me. I offered five skinny women ten pounds each. I was rejected from a hot bathroom encounter by one who wouldn’t pass their or her or his ethics. If we are saying too much, as I suspect we are, what becomes the occupation. Writer. Writing. Saying take the money…it’s a medium. I think three things about the two of them. One by one shake them off. The things I think, not the two of them.
•
for Mona and Donald (2)
Mona says bone broth. Taylor sees lemon water and a bath. Dr Steve agrees. There will be blood. Or according to the practice, there should be. The problem here, says K. I tried wanting to be happy. Mona and Donald come from a similar age, way of practice. I read the newspaper to find out just how bad really. The stock market climbs then climbs again. The banks take time. It’s on their side, and oh, his. This is not a pessimistic poem. No rental offers come for Mona and Donald. No level place for them to stand.
Newspapers debate what he knew and knows. Foucault says maybe he knows and maybe he thinks he knows. Suzanne says we have to be willing to give things up. I picture it. Up comes what white people, and I am one, said or grunted. Some fear, something crude about the homeless and their city shelter. That it’s dark at night. Triple pay three blocks away. Mona and Donald have two months left until their storied old school becomes history and dust. Only magic not probability on their side. Mini electronic placards say, Someone Out There Loves You. And, it’s white people’s job to smash white supremacy. It’s a white knuckle it kind of job.
•
for Ruth
Between the course and the course its precipitation transmogrifies from snow mist to snow to hail to snow to mist to rain. Along the same river and about it a big ancestral feeling as if for a change something Good has happened in the zone of memory usually reserved for that which keeps us staring at the window not there. No concrete fill. No reconstruction of some eternal shiny city of anyone’s dream. It’s just a shitty interior wall. Now it’s the river that’s changed and no more feeling. It’s not yet connected, by tributary or tribute, just some vague similarities of sound and umlaut. Is an umlaut an accent or a diacritical mark. Anyway, it’s pretty here just the same. In the distance we see the castles we’ve seen somewhere before.