Old poem- Autobiography Assignment

White Harbor, '96

We moved north of Palatine
to the state-line, where I
swallowed my first twelve years.

Of this time, I remember drinking
Jolt Cola and fucking my sofa,
thinking mostly of Lisa,
an older girl from Catholic School
who crowned me her Prince after
I let her use my urine for
a drug-test.

I remember Nate's brother Nick
showing me how to do cocaine
in his walk-in closet. I felt
sad and nauseous. I saw him
some years later, strung out
at Church's.

My mother was a substitute teacher,
Father a gun collector.
Sister painted her walls black
and blared Reznor, her savior.
I learned depression from her,
as well as how to swear.
My first love was her friend

Shelly, a mousy diet-pill addict
who would sometimes babysit me,
allowing me to watch TV before
falling asleep on her
non-belly.

Old Poem

Case Study

Wednesday, at the parkway,
Elizabeth accepted money from

an undercover deputy. Outside
the Estero Public Library,

Mallory purchases
21 tablets as a present

for Colie. All women,
charged with felonies,

remained friendly as
a total of 55 faces

took custody
of the evening

Revised older poem

Lorna, A minor

We spoke in strangled English
after belted with the garden hoe.
Conceived in cafeterias (hush!),
we were commas tossed through the fleshy O.

Soon the sky was redder than hellish russet,
and Grandpa's pills were gone in a week.
I begged you not to cross it
out, the sentence I sharpied on the back

of your pink and black ledger, where life
found language in shitlists and shades
of private anguish, as if
life was there only to rip you to shreds.

You were born in 1982
to red-eyed equines caked in frost
When you were eight you killed a cockatoo,
my love for you the cost.

new poem

On Ariel

Katie mentioned you
after school while we were

sitting in her room,
orbed by psychoactive fumes.

She told me I would love you,
and quickly introduced you,

not before urging me to take care
of you, to never lose you. I nodded

off for a second. Katie smacked me,
told me she was fucking serious.

You reeked of cannabis. Katie said
not to move too fast, that you were

stranger than the others.
With Hurricane Ivan on the horizon,

we were stuck inside
for the weekend. You were exhausting,

a lioness
with hellish lashes.

You told me about your father,
what a monster. I stayed

with you for hours, and fell asleep
as the storm killed the neighbors.

new poem

O.L.H.

Straighten your sweater and pocket those
poppers, it's Wednesday Mass. We move like
baby cows through the unadorned vestibule,
into the church adjacent

to our crotch-scented gymnasium.
Entering, one might wonder if
this place was designed for an angel
whose eternal musk did not smell

unlike a dollar store candle. We dab
our temples with blessed water, purchased
in bulk from Jewel-Osco, while icons rendered
in stained glass stare pervertedly.

Our Lady Of Humility headlocks me
in puberty as I become visibly
erect for no reason. No angel
can soften the lone Episcopalian.

My friend Nathan cleverly drops acid
at the end of the pew. I catch a whiff
of fish sticks as Father Radcliff passes,
his head as stubby as the cock of

Donatello's David. Two rows up,
God appears in the form of Lynette
Schrader's blonde hair. Like an angel,
she sleeps quietly, dreaming her way out.

new poem

The Sandpiper

She paces outside
The Sandpiper Inn, jaw shifting,
pupils pinned, arms itching under
her black peacoat.

I arrive out the side
of a '94 Ford Tempo,
so thrashed I pass out
in the hallway

of the wrong floor.
4 am: she calls
repeatedly to no answer.
Maybe tomorrow

I'll remember crawling
from a cul-de-sac in Covenant Cove,
covered in urine, repeating
her name. I dream

of my room
at the Sandpiper
littered with empty liters,
cut straws, and Lorna's

crumpled leggings.
I also dream of
things outside my room before
I wake up to her high heel mashing

my genitals.

new poem

“Osprey”

I woke up belly-down in Osprey, spun-out
and swollen near a Salvation Army.
The sky was bloated with clouds
of automotive injury. In the distance,
a siren cried like a baby, drowning
the ringing in my right ear. I could see
the accident clearly from the vacant lot
where my body lay heavy, surrounded
by soggy garbage. There was blood on
the gravel, and a uniformed man with
a Senator's stature overseeing
the stretchers.

Soon, my thoughts were unlucky
creatures waiting to be slaughtered.
I remembered a night in Wisconsin,
wandering naked through the snow, four
years old, my mother finding me frostbitten
before calling an ambulance. I remembered
my face full of liquid morphine.