News From Home

the t-shirt factory burned down and now he have nothing to wear on the tops of our bodies. your uncle painted his torso with the melted skin of the factory workers. the rest of town saw that and liked it. now we walk around beating our chests and thinking of clever designs. Some of the knitting circle sold their sewing machines to pay for glue. Skin gets flakey. There'd been a plan, approved by the mayor and everything, to boost civic pride by creating apparel based on the sillouhette of the water tower and catfish billboard by city limits. The idea, your cousin tells me, is to sell them to chiseled men and tall women to wear sexily in other
states, but now all our cloth is smoke. No one can put our town on their bodies, the jobs are all grumpy and angry, fruit is sad and wilty and we've been removed from wikipedia. This is what the mayor told us when he visited for dinner. We had my famous lamb-chops and he asked about you, what you're doing, I said I wasn't sure because your letters are so vague. We all had a laugh about that, except
for your aunt, who is not well and refuses to stay awake in church. When you come, bring anynews clippings about your activities, some smelling salts and sweaters. It will be winter by then,
I'm sure.

Nanowripomo (more more more)

(In response to SCB(BHMED)

Ask yourself again, waiting in line for coffee
three minutes late for work
Ask yourself again on the plane ride over
once the buildings disappear
all that are left are clouds
and movies starring
jessica alba and a talking dog.
Ask yourself when Home comes
Sign the date on the rent check
you've not filed, depending on the kindness
of parents, friends, siblings.
Ask yourself when you are too tired
to finish a chapter
of the classic novel
you should have read by now.
Ask yourself when the seven is
rolling like squares and your eyelids are crumbling city halls.
Keep yourself in check when you want to proclaim
the end of bad habits, the ways you like to love, the crash courses
you claim you've completed. Ask yourself again how long it will take
when you cannot stop the chatter wearing down your ears,
when your knees give way on everyday hills that turned downward escalators.

Satans Hands of Hats or
All I Ever Wanted to Know About Macrame Remains a Mystery
It'll burn your hair clean off,
the way they throw the drambuie in this place.
across the room like a frisbee
(if you can dodge a flaming drink, you can dodge a ball)
"I don't know why we come here," she says everytime,
though she's the driver.

We danced when there was the bone-music,
the head-swivel rock.
We billed the waiters for their poor service
and vomited on the still-young
indoor rhodedendrons, but they shook us down
for the last scrags of change
their ever-widening eyes nothing but wheels of rotating flame

we tipped our wigs to the devil in the corner,
who knew he was such a good accordionist?

Holy, Holy, Holy (sing along now)
or I Responded to the Altar Call and All I Got Was this Stifling, Guilt-Inducing Relationship
They have such reverent stances. Fresh blue tennis-shoes on
convention hall carpet. The boys in the worship band used
to be bartenders, espresso machines, hired killers, but now
their freshly-strung guitars and eyes-half-closed toward heaven
beckon you forward, after, they do the conversion strut,
would high-five if it weren't so worldly.

They drink stouts over bible studies, where they bear the weight
of the lost around them with deep sad brown eyes, don't suscribe to
a theology allowing jokes, there is no time for joy not derived
from the sharp curves of their arms on acoustic guitars,
their plate-passing, their entire bodies are the cross, the nails,
you can make them holy

and when they walk with you, you are the bride of christ,
the heat of their hands burns hot into your side, when you
pass other men they draw you tight like lost little lambs,
faces imploring you to ask them about their tears; they quote
St Augustine or Shane Claiborne and have money set aside
for charity once house payments are done.