Give Me My Month

You are not a forgotten book
not something I have put on
the shelf

You are not my chased lover
whom I have left for someone
else

You are not the snow and I am
not the spring sun, come to
cure your winter dream

You are not an unloved puppy
ready to be put to death because
of your lazy eye

No, you are a not the fat girl
or the tall girl or the brace-faced
one without a prom date

you are not the unplayed violin
with broken strings collecting
dust in the attic

Still not the train left to
rust off of the pacific railroad
tracks

you are not the spider web swept
up by human hands waving waves
at unseen spindles

you are the red wheel barrow, the plums in the icebox,
the moving metro masses, the petals, the bow;
you are catalina island just out of sight,
an autumn apparition placed in pacific paradise.

Alone Together

what kind of guilt
keeps you up at night,
the kind that explodes
behind your cardiac muscle
pushing poison plasma past

open arteries or is it
the kind that simmers and
bubbles like a pot full
of tomato soup; the kind
that wakes you at 3am

with strong acid reflux
with heartburn that can't
be fixed by pills. Oh no
it's almost light out again
and this time you win, you win.

Elder Brennon Hawkins

Your address slipped
from the dust jacket
of a Lou Rawls LP

TOO MUCH
the title screams
at me

and you roll
all the way back
into existence again

Brennan, you were lost
and the missspelling
of your name, and your

address in South Carolina,
isn't what I'm after at all -
it's more about the lady who

wrote your name and "ELDER"
down on the card, and what
she was sending you, you the

lost boy, the "modern day
miracle," you the inside-
outside, never on the wrong side

boy, and boy oh boy, you were missed;
your mother kissed your lips like
an apple with a lisp, wind whips

and the sun slips behind the
world's lips, darkness with
the hint of lipstick.

I hope the letter made it to
you my boy and I hope you got
exactly what you deserve.