Party plans began
The Wednesday before
In our tiny dorm meeting,
& by Saturday
We were a funny tableau
Of do-it-yourself,
The upstairs girls club-ready & fragrant
As the boys set to boogieing
In pajama pants.
First-floor Will would lug electronics
To the lounge
& plug them in with a crackle
Next to an iced-up keg
& drinks arrayed like rainbows
On a makeshift bar.
If you stepped outside you could hear
Faint sounds of freshmen
Masquerading through fraternities,
But inside we kept it real
To 2Pac & Michael J.,
& jived to “Like a Virgin”
In our shimmering vortex.
We felt free without wristbands
As we dished out cards
In corner game circles,
& raised eyebrows at couples
Slipping off to make love behind locked doors.
Later in the hallway
We’d solve the world’s problems
In confident voices
& let global worries drift off with us at five a.m.
Sunday mornings found us
Leaning on vacuums & trading pearls of gossip
To procrastinate essays,
& when the afternoon light
Began to play off our laptops,
We typed deft words about the real life
But tried to keep daydreaming
In three dimensions.
(2006)
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Poems for Milwaukee
Where Maps are Enough, and Not Enough
This geography drips poison:
birth-bitten its potency threads
Du Boisian veins, old fractures
mutating to norms, the
sutures that bind us. Thank
Kilbourn and Juneau for their
rancor of settlers and hand-me-
downs of crooked cross-streets over the
Milwaukee River—1846 comes 2008
packaged in equations as numbered
streets go west and blacken
while East Side gridded
blocks lighten toward shoreline perches
and erstwhile little South-Side
Warsaw concedes the future’s taken
by nuestro nuevo D.F. When natives
staked Milwaukee as the
good place where the rivers
meet, could they see the Menomonee
cutting a daggered ocean
between black and brown
or the Kinnickinnik turning southerly
around the hip—and white and older—
Bay View, or envision edges
powder-sprinkled, dusted right
out to the suburbs, or feel our
nightmares tracing knife-marks over
inner maps, and did they ever
wonder why some rivers drip
so smoothly into lines?
(2008)
***
Game of Three, Kern Park
Just guys swapping sweat,
we trade names and hoops to fend
off summer’s last breath—
it’s me, Rick, and Ken
scraping for space and the holy
grail, twenty-one.
Rick loops around till he
sees a gap he can smoke through
audaciously,
and feathered in for two
that’s nineteen to my twelve, Ken’s six,
so we know
his next shot’s a brick—
can’t win from the stripe—and as I
rebound and kick
out I hear some quasi-
praise or curse in Ken’s rasped
shout of “Bird has it”
—nothing new since last
week’s cry of Bob Pettit
as I shoveled a pass
to a kid in Bucks’ threads—
but now Rick puts up my
miss to end it—Shit,
I breathe out at pride
trounced—to think there’s always a curse
to mark divides—
and shaking off scars
we strap helmets on mopped
brows to part ways, but first
I see Rick stop,
fish out a joint, and hear him
ask Ken if I’m a cop.
(2008)
***
The Good Life
That summer the Good Life
arose from raw material. Daily
from the #10 I saw a brick box
kitchen grinding out of old
foundations hard against a dining
room shaped in spectacular
glass. At last they raised the roof
swooped like lake waves, &
“We’re Open” signs brought
under-30s & brunch &
listings in the A.V. Club. My first
Saturday inside, I breathed fresh
air between reggae beats at races
lit by dancing colored lights &
mixing smartly like something
at the art museum, lakefront.
Stepping out for cooler river air
I gazed another novelty—more
hope in a building, Cajun fare
this time. Soon I saw a Journal
feature touting newly-opened
Bayou & an architecture
column on the arc of high-rise
triumphs, downtown. A visiting
aunt occasioned Good Life dinner
& reunion banter ran to sociology,
a comment on directions—exit at
blight, east to vitality—What an
interesting city. Stacked seafood
disappeared under Wisconsin tales
spun into the shadows while
suspended lamps lit halos of
orange around faces pushing in
on ours—bold brushstrokes,
in the heart of the Rust Belt.
We paid & blinked into a chilly
outside as the sun dipped past
the ink-dark river. Making for
her rental car we breathed soil,
& when I glimpsed signs
flapping on the night the condos
began their long ascent
inside my mind.
(2008)
***
1982–2007, Walnut Street
Pretty girls bedecked in
stretched polyester still
almost fitting press in on
elders in Victorian ensembles,
uncles wrinkled past their
years, aunts regal in burgundy
lipstick and nails galloping
into nested triangles—which
in my grip I comprehend
are fresh and somehow meant
for survival—and traipsing
after colleagues from across
town are young men—my
age—who’ve salvaged their
best collars from the closet,
and then the innocently wandering
footsteps of schoolchildren
perplexed but happy in their
denim, unable to peer above
painted fingernails to glimpse
hung crosses and the weight on
older sisters’ shoulders.
Before the afternoon expires
these whitewashed walls
will absorb fifteen tracks
of uplift, three hours of
deflected wails, and two long
marches under a beautiful,
awful sun, but a single slug
of vengeful lead will still
remain unspoken for.
(2008)
***
Jackson Street
East of the river
at Jackson, hoodie
perched on eyes
glued to cement
cracks or scuttled
Cousins’ sub bags,
shoes skin-dusky
to toe the curb,
shuffling up &
back in tune with
March-fresh winds
slapping off the
Michigan, hands
frozen in pockets
pulling aged cotton
taut over shoulders
sloped like the sun’s
arc. It’s ten past
one on Tuesday
& another gust
sweeps a fifteen-
year-old onto
the #30.
(2008)
***
Radio Milwaukee
Eighty-eight point nine
she tunes, across the viaduct
and to rapture.
Indie twists to soul
and grooves “you’ll love” mark borders,
mills, fading to black.
We voice discarded fears
as she turns, adds volume:
hope in a format.
(2008)
***
Race
Trembling off the bus
she feared rape: “Gook stared me down.”
“Black,” she meant—and feared.
(2007)
***
Poem for Milwaukee, Poem for a Friend
On Third Street sweat comes
Dripping like last days.
Mark drains a Gatorade beside
Me as we twist yarn of flared-out
Infatuations into shapes we can
Recognize. Reversing course
On Commerce Street steals my
Wonder all over again: white brick
Piles on itself like rescued
Genealogies, as tales pilfered
From the Central stacks overload
My senses. Cream City, the
First name I knew for it.
If it’s the twentieth that makes
Ten months I’ve known him,
A year here. We skirt the night’s
Cavorters & our voices dissolve
Into the North Ave. Y, the park at
Locust, worksongs, & several
Common revelations. July is on
The wind as someone’s grilling
Bratwurst: reality. We pace on,
Resist the coming gaps with
Memory. Like bugs we fall into
The light & out of it again.
(2008)
This geography drips poison:
birth-bitten its potency threads
Du Boisian veins, old fractures
mutating to norms, the
sutures that bind us. Thank
Kilbourn and Juneau for their
rancor of settlers and hand-me-
downs of crooked cross-streets over the
Milwaukee River—1846 comes 2008
packaged in equations as numbered
streets go west and blacken
while East Side gridded
blocks lighten toward shoreline perches
and erstwhile little South-Side
Warsaw concedes the future’s taken
by nuestro nuevo D.F. When natives
staked Milwaukee as the
good place where the rivers
meet, could they see the Menomonee
cutting a daggered ocean
between black and brown
or the Kinnickinnik turning southerly
around the hip—and white and older—
Bay View, or envision edges
powder-sprinkled, dusted right
out to the suburbs, or feel our
nightmares tracing knife-marks over
inner maps, and did they ever
wonder why some rivers drip
so smoothly into lines?
(2008)
***
Game of Three, Kern Park
Just guys swapping sweat,
we trade names and hoops to fend
off summer’s last breath—
it’s me, Rick, and Ken
scraping for space and the holy
grail, twenty-one.
Rick loops around till he
sees a gap he can smoke through
audaciously,
and feathered in for two
that’s nineteen to my twelve, Ken’s six,
so we know
his next shot’s a brick—
can’t win from the stripe—and as I
rebound and kick
out I hear some quasi-
praise or curse in Ken’s rasped
shout of “Bird has it”
—nothing new since last
week’s cry of Bob Pettit
as I shoveled a pass
to a kid in Bucks’ threads—
but now Rick puts up my
miss to end it—Shit,
I breathe out at pride
trounced—to think there’s always a curse
to mark divides—
and shaking off scars
we strap helmets on mopped
brows to part ways, but first
I see Rick stop,
fish out a joint, and hear him
ask Ken if I’m a cop.
(2008)
***
The Good Life
That summer the Good Life
arose from raw material. Daily
from the #10 I saw a brick box
kitchen grinding out of old
foundations hard against a dining
room shaped in spectacular
glass. At last they raised the roof
swooped like lake waves, &
“We’re Open” signs brought
under-30s & brunch &
listings in the A.V. Club. My first
Saturday inside, I breathed fresh
air between reggae beats at races
lit by dancing colored lights &
mixing smartly like something
at the art museum, lakefront.
Stepping out for cooler river air
I gazed another novelty—more
hope in a building, Cajun fare
this time. Soon I saw a Journal
feature touting newly-opened
Bayou & an architecture
column on the arc of high-rise
triumphs, downtown. A visiting
aunt occasioned Good Life dinner
& reunion banter ran to sociology,
a comment on directions—exit at
blight, east to vitality—What an
interesting city. Stacked seafood
disappeared under Wisconsin tales
spun into the shadows while
suspended lamps lit halos of
orange around faces pushing in
on ours—bold brushstrokes,
in the heart of the Rust Belt.
We paid & blinked into a chilly
outside as the sun dipped past
the ink-dark river. Making for
her rental car we breathed soil,
& when I glimpsed signs
flapping on the night the condos
began their long ascent
inside my mind.
(2008)
***
1982–2007, Walnut Street
Pretty girls bedecked in
stretched polyester still
almost fitting press in on
elders in Victorian ensembles,
uncles wrinkled past their
years, aunts regal in burgundy
lipstick and nails galloping
into nested triangles—which
in my grip I comprehend
are fresh and somehow meant
for survival—and traipsing
after colleagues from across
town are young men—my
age—who’ve salvaged their
best collars from the closet,
and then the innocently wandering
footsteps of schoolchildren
perplexed but happy in their
denim, unable to peer above
painted fingernails to glimpse
hung crosses and the weight on
older sisters’ shoulders.
Before the afternoon expires
these whitewashed walls
will absorb fifteen tracks
of uplift, three hours of
deflected wails, and two long
marches under a beautiful,
awful sun, but a single slug
of vengeful lead will still
remain unspoken for.
(2008)
***
Jackson Street
East of the river
at Jackson, hoodie
perched on eyes
glued to cement
cracks or scuttled
Cousins’ sub bags,
shoes skin-dusky
to toe the curb,
shuffling up &
back in tune with
March-fresh winds
slapping off the
Michigan, hands
frozen in pockets
pulling aged cotton
taut over shoulders
sloped like the sun’s
arc. It’s ten past
one on Tuesday
& another gust
sweeps a fifteen-
year-old onto
the #30.
(2008)
***
Radio Milwaukee
Eighty-eight point nine
she tunes, across the viaduct
and to rapture.
Indie twists to soul
and grooves “you’ll love” mark borders,
mills, fading to black.
We voice discarded fears
as she turns, adds volume:
hope in a format.
(2008)
***
Race
Trembling off the bus
she feared rape: “Gook stared me down.”
“Black,” she meant—and feared.
(2007)
***
Poem for Milwaukee, Poem for a Friend
On Third Street sweat comes
Dripping like last days.
Mark drains a Gatorade beside
Me as we twist yarn of flared-out
Infatuations into shapes we can
Recognize. Reversing course
On Commerce Street steals my
Wonder all over again: white brick
Piles on itself like rescued
Genealogies, as tales pilfered
From the Central stacks overload
My senses. Cream City, the
First name I knew for it.
If it’s the twentieth that makes
Ten months I’ve known him,
A year here. We skirt the night’s
Cavorters & our voices dissolve
Into the North Ave. Y, the park at
Locust, worksongs, & several
Common revelations. July is on
The wind as someone’s grilling
Bratwurst: reality. We pace on,
Resist the coming gaps with
Memory. Like bugs we fall into
The light & out of it again.
(2008)
Poems for Milwaukee: Game of Three, Kern Park
Just guys swapping sweat,
we trade names and hoops to fend
off summer’s last breath—
it’s me, Rick, and Ken
scraping for space and the holy
grail, twenty-one.
Rick loops around till he
sees a gap he can smoke through
audaciously,
and feathered in for two
that’s nineteen to my twelve, Ken’s six,
so we know
his next shot’s a brick—
can’t win from the stripe—and as I
rebound and kick
out I hear some quasi-
praise or curse in Ken’s rasped
shout of “Bird has it”
—nothing new since last
week’s cry of Bob Pettit
as I shoveled a pass
to a kid in Bucks’ threads—
but now Rick puts up my
miss to end it—Shit,
I breathe out at pride
trounced—to think there’s always a curse
to mark divides—
and shaking off scars
we strap helmets on mopped
brows to part ways, but first
I see Rick stop,
fish out a joint, and hear him
ask Ken if I’m a cop.
(2008)
we trade names and hoops to fend
off summer’s last breath—
it’s me, Rick, and Ken
scraping for space and the holy
grail, twenty-one.
Rick loops around till he
sees a gap he can smoke through
audaciously,
and feathered in for two
that’s nineteen to my twelve, Ken’s six,
so we know
his next shot’s a brick—
can’t win from the stripe—and as I
rebound and kick
out I hear some quasi-
praise or curse in Ken’s rasped
shout of “Bird has it”
—nothing new since last
week’s cry of Bob Pettit
as I shoveled a pass
to a kid in Bucks’ threads—
but now Rick puts up my
miss to end it—Shit,
I breathe out at pride
trounced—to think there’s always a curse
to mark divides—
and shaking off scars
we strap helmets on mopped
brows to part ways, but first
I see Rick stop,
fish out a joint, and hear him
ask Ken if I’m a cop.
(2008)
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