Lipstick

Cranberry Frost
Velvet Crush
Rum Raisin.

Pretty in Pink
Wine on Ice
Del Rio Satin.

Copperglaze Brown
Amber Glass
Mahogany.

Sweet Nothings
Cherry Brown
Wine with Everything.

Partial Nude
Hint of Red
Peony.

Sweet Nutmeg
Burnished Crystal
Cheap Thrill.

Spicy Nut
Peachy Blossom
Apple Cordial.

Chocolate Rouge
Pink Blush
Violent Chill.

Big dick
Fuck dick
Suck dick.

Sell dick
Smear dick
Sure dick.

Lick dick
Get dick
See dick.

Run Dick
Plum dick
Dicksickle.

Hand dick
Hold dick
Write dick.

Stick dick
Up dick
Humdicker.

Dick comes
with or without
lipstick.



Last Gourmet

Only you
you graduate fool
invade my private
teeth-starved façade
with punctilious
un-engagement.
Romance a Marxist parade.
We scatter along
(dropping seeds, crumbs)
life a temporary siege
of picnic decorum.

Stories, pets, rejects
(your heart dialects)
butter me pleasant.
Your moods a menu
of mistaken childhood.
For you, Kamau Brathwaite
on a bed of Belgian greens.
For me, fine salmon
tart with lemon.
It’s gorgeous, mind you.
We’re finished, thank you.

(like growling hunger
for corn bread,
skillet-pampered
scallops and dallops.
Fed like a mistress I am.
It was a ripe time,
a slice-of mango-on-a-knife time).

A note curls on my dresser
keen of its own
minute tendency toward
nothing but being.
It says: “Buy Joni Mitchell’s Blue.”
The hotness of curry.
The delirious reign of a snoring
chest, lilliputian to its
“nombril du monde”
yanked from its mother
(its cavernous deep)
drum to the trumpet

underneath, its performative speech
crude, sloppily lewd.
But I ate it all, my fuel
(how oral of you to muse me)
the jack of all codes
who taught me nothing
except to walk down my body
and run with it.



Trousseau

The summer of ‘93
mom and I drove
no further than Ocean City.
Chemo was her ballast.
I napped and read,
poked about the pool
spying old dreams like
a one-track navigator.

She’d jerk awake
on the king-sized bed,
drugged to her eyeballs
from bite-sized meds—
struggle to stammer:
I think I’m hallucinating.

I'd heave to, mark my place
in Peyton Place,
uncinch the scarf
clutched
like a caterpillar
about her neck.

Sometimes, I’d read
aloud to her.
Plunging
sentence
after sentence
for fear
if I stopped
I’d end her life.

Dreams jury-rigged us
to consciousness:

We were a lonesome crew
between sinkers of meds
and waves of unwavering gelatin,
snorkeling off a ghost yacht
named “Trousseau.”
Mom got swamp-nosed
and honked like a swan.
A police boat from Guadeloupe
passed starboard.
Slick cops in
ready-to-fuck wear
coughed up bits of dope
that rose in their wake
like blow-jobs.

Eyeball fish swam agape
flirting between our legs.
Mom peered through school
windows to capture me.
We were in deep water,
she, still a catch
even with one breast,
furious to win our conch—

whose slippery meat
Felipe roasted in island spices.
Mom wielded her bridal knives
and threatened to serve me up
like Boston Cream Pie.
Sex on deck was prohibited
but she unfurled her blue bikini—
raised it in offering like the host—
before flinging it at me
saying she'd lost one breast,
why pretend to have two?—
saying it would unzip nicely
in the back of a Mercedes.