3 Poems
- By cait collins

3 Poems
- By David Chorlton

heads up

I walked along
the boardwalk
in atlantic city
one clear
crisp night
in February and
I snapped a shot
of
3 ladies glowing
through a fashion store
window dressed
in beautiful sequined gowns with
no heads

they
shimmered
under
the moon
light with-
out moving and
a man
stopped and pointed to
the lady in the middle
the lady shining the brightest
the one excelling top style
the lady posing in
the T-length gown and
he said
I bet that one there
is pretty
expensive

yep yep
I said
to the stranger

he didn't take
his eyes off of them
he fumbled
the filter end
of his cigarette
along the corner
of his mouth as
he asked
why
don't you stand in front
of the window
I'll take your camera and
I'll take your picture

I stood there
watched
the trio
twinkle in sync
with the starry
night and
I replied
well
thanks anyway man
but it's alright I
won't
fit in because
I have
my head
on
tonight



dollar store

I
was
at a strip
mall
at the super
market
complex and
I went
into
the dollar store
just for
the hell of it
(I usually shop
in the mall) and
I bought
a pair
of leather-
look ankle
high
black vinyl
shoes
for
5
bucks



gourmet hot cakes

you
whistle as I
waltz
about the room
in the
cotton tail'd
shirt your shirt
floats wider than
a ballroom
gown you
are tall
macho and
your hair is longer
than mine and

I come
close
to your side
trace a poem
on your back and
call you
sexy
uncovered
bare
to the bone-
rrr
yesterday's
sex
stuck like summer sap
on a tree to your
knee and
you pull me
down
tug the shirt
from my shoulder
pinch my nipple
between your
lips

what did you
say
on my back
you ask

you kink you
arouse me
but it's near
noon
I said I'll
make you
breakfast

I switch
style
pirouette toward
the door like
a ballerina
high
on
tippy toes
and last nights
sins
la la la and

when I get there
I bend over
flip
the tails
of your shirt
expose
my bare
ass end and leave you
behind smiling with
a hard hard-
on and

in the kitchen I
perk the coffee
squeeze the juice down
my titties
clutch
the bowl of pancake batter
under
my arm
and whip it
smoooooth like
the sea of your
cream
around
my mouth

o baby now!
come on babe!

I hear you!
I hear you!
I hear you I
shout and
I rush
down the hall
move in
with the batter bowl
in range and
just in time? I
have another gourmet
breakfast
comin
right up!

Fire Wall

"You really want to burn it down?" the rider asked him.
"Well I can show you how."


from an article in the New Times featuring an interview with an arsonist responsible for burning down a series of unfinished homes
near the Phoenix Mountains Preserve

You start by crawling on the stones
where lizards sleep, then
you fly
with the flickers who nest
in saguaro, and finally your feet
touch the ground like a coyote's.
You climb
the mountain and look down
at where the desert was
before yellow machines
scooped it up. Listen
to them growl. Watch
as they eat away the mesquite
and spit out the foundations
of another house. Make an appointment
with the real estate agent just to see
the gleam in her eye. Hover
on thermals with the hawk
and see the land dry up beneath you.
You are ready
to rezone it back to its natural state
and to train
for your secret life. It is easy
as lighting up a cigarette, and leaning back
with the taste of smoke
rolling from your tongue
when you grow tired of talking back
at city planners, tired
of voting, tired of sitting
in the road to block the work, tired
tired of marching with a cardboard sign
held up like a flag
for which there is no country.
An agent of fire, you set your first,
but remember
that once begun
your work never ends.



Joan of Arc

Between the sackcloth and the smoke
her shadow climbs
out of its ashes
and flesh that melted from its bones
returns to form the body's shape.
The fire swells again,
an avalanche of stones
falls through her face
and flames shiver
against her skin
before they wane and she climbs down
from the kindling,
then the hair
shaved from her scalp grows back.
And returning to the room of instruments
she lies between their teeth
while the layers of pain are peeled away.
The judges reassemble
with their power-eaten faces
to listen to her rebuke
each time they read the charges.
Selecting one
at a time, she looks them
in the eye.
She has come from the dead
to proclaim her innocence, but still
her accusers respond
by looking away
and blowing gently
against their fingernails.





Touch

A sleeper's hands
detach themselves at the wrist.
Without disturbing him
they rise from the linen sheet
and feel their way

first along the wall
whose plaster is so cool
it feels like cream,

then the right one comes down
to the grain on the wooden table
while the left
turns a few crumbling pages

of the yellowing book
left open at bedside.
The hands do not know it is dark.
They go wherever they want;

along the gilt ridges
of an old portrait's frame,
around the belly
of the clay jug
full of water,
and into the gap where the door is open
to a warm current of air.
While they float

between textures,
pale and slender,
the man shifts in his sleep

and makes to brush
from his brow a fly
who feels through its feet
the fragile skin
and beneath it
the impenetrable curve of the skull.