preoccupied by this bird
knocking on my occipital I lie about the man squatting on the windowsill hammerhead gargoyle his cranial cavity is a chasm not a canyon a silkworm tunneled therein the man arrived on a saucer not in the Ming vase delft might have inked him this is not an exercise in retroflexion I am not inverted There is too much truth- telling I lie about rococo and the ceiling of the Bavarian castle Bardolino confessional & a priest named Theo the flaking wall of the cellar and my grandfather and his minions a chop shop a hog Harley and Chapstick about mixing turmeric and turpentine for that savory stew I fed you saliva and phlegm-gobs, as it happens This bird is an augur presaging a Jungian carnival bowling pins gyre horses say Mother a dog laps another dog round a NASCAR track a rolled up tongue a home-rolled cigarette Are you on board clipped in pinned to styrofoam? Did you build the pop can pyramid on the floor of the Pacific? If you ask me I will lie There's no two ways about it I hang spiraling like a mobile driftwood fossil foil aluminum rabbit ear antennae a ribcage in a glass case a cake box without a cake now you see Do you believe?  Wednesdays
on Wednesdays we laid rough stones along the dry-lipped crinkled edges of his porch on Wednesdays he looked away you swiped my face your tawdry hanky Assam-stained we wrung each other out on Wednesdays I watched his gray-jacket body shoulders like a hook I counted his steps in the drive passenger door swung shut like a red rubber stamp on Wednesdays I retired to the wicker rocker he left behind trying to decide what was lonelier, an empty chair or a single chopstick on Wednesdays you came from behind covered my eyes surprise surprise I missed him before his car was out of sight Wednesdays Written in collaboration with Brendan Bonsack (www.brendanbonsack.com) By Brendan Bonsack and Reka Jellema August 2014 
we hunkered down
in the unholy holes behind newsprint sleeves rolled all Wall Street all auto mechanic all greased & slicked we hack-sawed concrete sidestepped knapsacks asleep on park benches we fouled pinafores spoke in pinpricks pacifiers planted in pie-holes we watched you evanesce with panache we watched cocked and maned we watched one thumb with silvery polish roll into a ditch tin can cocktail weenie someone said pickled punks someone said boiled pigs feet we hunkered down in a moshpit of unclaimed legs & crumpled bits labia in pubic nests ear lobe potato chips a wad of chewed bubble gum smeared lips the color red no one will ever read this someone said turn it off your boy spilled Tinker Toys dropped an f-bomb we eye-rolled handed off the remote we tuned in we hunkered down -- hamboned the gig riffed & licked cat-gutted it chopped chords heads rolled spurt spurt a kneecap snapped like a forest twig we jukeboxed -- hair stiff on her cheek an eye adrift sky-ward as-if oh heavens above someone said while the doc dug earth from a socket with a toothpick we hunkered down dirt-nailed hammered-home wanted something to stick in our hole stop-gap what we did to fill ourselves what we did carefully tread missed our femurs our metatarsals we missed our spleens our tongues our tonsils we off-handed those harelipped kids those kids flew into the vast indifference those kids landed piecemeal the Barbies we threw splayed and indecent  O stone
I hold you dear Wrap round your Rough gray Place my mouth On your mouth The gods did not know of The scab of your soul Of tenderness tendered A circle of moon Its powder a tinder Liquid and soft And lain upon the flint Like a palm that says Be still Written with Brendan Bonsack By Reka Jellema and Brendan Bonsack July 2014  I want my body back though
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