Fat Naked People

I wonder if my neighbors are fat naked people and when they have sex their skin rubs like silk in the spin cycle, slipping and indistinguishable in their wetness. I wonder if they smell like coconut lotions and sweat and they press into each other with their roundness, and he is lost in her and she is herself with him, for a moment forgetting the relief in the eyes of devilish skinny girls as they realize they look much more attractive to their men when she passes in the street, by restaurant tables, in grocery isles. I wonder if the pain in their bones, their hearts, her back, disappears, if they heal one another. If the pressure of being fat and naked in front of another person is taken from their throats without the numbing of alcohol, or if the numbing of alcohol is out of habit and shared among them. Or maybe they're always happy, with each other, without, maybe they're secure and that's why she groans without shame and he grunts while they fuck and that's why I am sitting here listening to my neighbors making human connections at 4 a.m. and sometimes I am listening to them argue without shame and like they hate each other. Maybe it's why they'll do anything to fill their apartment with themselves, their volume and their wetness and their touching, so full that it leaks through the walls and it draws me and I wish we all could have more.

A Christmas Poem

This is a Christmas poem. It is not a Hanukkah, or, Chanukah, poem. A poem about wood or sweat or liquified wax, red. It is not a poem about palm trees, as somber and drunken as July in the forty-degree Florida winter, wrapped with multi-colored strands to celebrate light golden Mexican beer. This is not a poem about limes and other things squeezed into bottlenecks. Skin and guts contorting to spaces they were never meant for. No, this is a Christmas poem. Not a poem about Christ in thorns or about Nikolaos of Myra in Ray-Bans. Once my family gave no gifts but gave the anticipation of gift-giving to one another. Once my family gave each other lots of gifts. Always, my family sits in a circle and thinks of wrapping paper.

A Story at High Noon

Midday is the time metal warms under salty rays and barrels squeeze lead penes until they explode and burn stomachs with the fire of their finishes. That's how the race is won, hombre. Until tomorrow, when twitching fingers know what the inside of a hole is, I'm watching the past and wondering how it ever got out of that place, under the sun, you and me wearing dirt like clothes, breathing smoke like air. But most of all the smell of herrings rotting in the heat. If you catch me taking a moment to inhale, remember what's in my throat, that smell that brings buzzing interlopers like the hum of electricity shooting through your skull. Dust it off and listen for the rattle before you reach in the eye socket. It's hard to think of home with your brain coiled, señores, unless you've got venom in the blood before the strike. And that's a story about why it's better to be dead than to be harmless.

A song about Tarpon season in Boca Grande, Florida

Why are the fish in the ocean so blue
and why does the dirt hold our feet just like glue
that’s what newton said; he was that apple guy
Why do the shimmering kitchen sinks rust, and why are we hurt by the people we trust
Why are Christmas trees lit up like a million multi-colored stars
but only in December

Oh I know we can’t go back home but
Why can’t we just call this home

Why are the clouds everything everywhere and
why does the sunset remind us of there and
why can’t we go back and why can’t we have that and why aren’t we there yet and how might we live best if everything’s shitty okay not shitty per se, but monetarily disadvantaged.
Why is the best we can give not enough if the kitchen sink’s clogged we can swim with the cups if the dog wont stop barking we’ll all yip yip yip til the police come.

Oh I know we can’t go back home but
Why can’t we just call this home
Oh I know we can’t go back home but
why can’t I just call you home my love.

Why are the fish in the ocean so blue
could it be there are plenty but none of them you.