I should have unspoken my wish,
reeled it back into my mouth–
or at least tried. Maybe the intention

would have meant
something.

But now it’s out there, my wish,
drifting over the back fence
to kill chickens or children,

wringing whatever small necks it can find.

Prompts: Imaginary Garden with Real Toads (a wish) and Poetic Asides (unspoken).

Is it cool with you if I smoke
this ham
in your living room, as long as
I open all the windows and doors?
You weren’t using this
prosthetic leg
for anything, were you?
I mean, I know you use it sometimes,
but right now you’re just sitting there, so …?
Are we cool?
Is everything cool?
Good, because I used your 20 dollars
to buy monkey chow at the zoo.
I figured it would be cool
because it was only 20 dollars
and those were some hungry monkeys.

Prompt: Poetic Asides (a cool and/or uncool poem).

This is the office where we figure out what’s true
and what’s an urban legend, like so much Dr Pepper
poured down the storm drain to melt all the alligators
like hot dogs or stomachs. This is where we keep the truth,
in alphabetical files that line every wall. The untruths
resist filing. They smoke in the bathroom and stare at us.
They tell each other their lies, make us feel
like our work will never be important.

Prompt: Poetic Asides (a poem about an office).

My honeydude is no Half-Day Tony.
When I’ve reached my stresshold,
when I’m procaffeinating because
of some intense fuckery or other,
he brings me a baker’s shit ton of
flowers or little packets of sugar.
When I thank him, he says it’s all
in the homie fund. We go out
for a snakemeal every three days,
then I lose myself in lady snores
while he waits for me outside,
snapping his icicle fingers.
 

Prompt: NaPoWriMo (include 10 words/terms from a specialized dictionary. Guess which one I used?)

Today, we read that the low-slung dark nightmare on the lake
might be replaced by a cone-shaped white funhouse on the lake.
Still, something on the lake where there should be nothing–
I wish Burnham would come back from the dead, read everyone
a scrap of his plan as he scrapes off so many ticky-tacky barnacles
that belong not to the people but to certain people. I have a theory
that Rahm Emanuel wants me gone, is trying to force me out
by making life here untenable. If you walk three minutes
down certain alleys in my neighborhood, you can still find
an alternate universe of riding toys and barbecue grills,
even clotheslines and people talking to each other.
On the sidewalk outside Cholie’s, under the Metra tracks
(the viaduct, we say here), I once saw two or three pigeons
squabbling over one subpar slice of sausage pizza. This was
not far from where just the other day, someone walked up
and shot into someone’s car and then ran away. Gunshots–
these used to occur just outside the invisible borders of our
island, and lately they happen within them. We all
tell each other about them and ask ourselves
just what the hell is going on. Postcards of our city
still show those sailboats, valiant as anything
mythological, and the lake, still standing there
as always–glassy and stupid, believing it’s a sea.

Prompts: Poetic Asides (a poem about a restaurant/food place), NaPoWriMo (a lengthy list that results in a snapshot of some location), and Imaginary Garden with Real Toads (remains).

She had a tooth made of paper, she said–
she could not afford to be lavish. The tooth,
I know, was ochre, dun, or ivory. She said
she had it dyed to match the others,
a bright white tooth among dull neighbors
would be gaudy (a word she used often,
usually to describe me, my velvet coat).
On the flat of her hand, she balanced
a ring; it bounced on a blood vessel as
she breathed in dusty air, breathed out
whatever fire still remained in her,
whatever fire she had left.

Hey, friends, I need a time out from all this
scar tissue in my left calf, and now in my right,
a headache at the base of my skull, and all my other
ailments. I want to go back to when things were
simple and babies loved me as baseballs bounced
over summer fields while I thought that I knew
everything, or at least one thing really well, or two.

Prompt: Poetic Asides (time out).

insane my wall
my name in letters
7 feet high

my flowers that are not
flowers

insane my hedges
my battlements

whiter than white

Prompt: Imaginary Garden with Real Toads (a poem based on a photo posted there — if you click over, I bet you can guess which one).

Cheese scalloped asparagus and noodles with salmon
chiffon cake. Angel wings, singed, freezing. Eating
hearts in cream, preparing for salad pan-fried
with eggs. Measuring types of sheets, easy
lovelight barracuda cupcakes. How to use ground
heart: minute or cube stroganoff. Butter dips
Iris’ old-fashioned Southern stir-n-roll sweet milk.
Typical midnight: quick, elegant, streamlined.

Prompt: NaPoWriMo (write a poem using the index of a book). Imaginary Garden with Real Toads had a free day.

The gases rose before I could stop them
or even notice, and then I forgot where I was
or what glorious fatherland I was serving
or what my name was, or anything.
For some reason, I thought of pebbles
in the creek when I was a girl, how I
picked them up, tasted them, slid them
under my tongue and ran, with never
the faintest idea that I could choke.

Prompt: Imaginary Garden with Real Toads (a Soviet sci-fi poster).