Remembering Our First Apartment

Julia, the fat woman without a job
who lived beside us,
stood on her front porch,
a cigarette hanging from her lips,
shouting out the side
of her mouth at Dorothy,
the fat woman without a job
who lived above us.
Julia told her "to get off her fat ass
and move her shitbox car
so she can get out
of the fucking driveway 
to go to the goddamn liquor store
before it fucking closes."
Dorothy then called her
"a skanky-ass fat ho"
and told her to "come down
off the fucking porch
and say that shit to her face."
Julia flicked her cigarette
at Dorothy and waddled
off the porch, telling Dorothy
to "just fucking try it."
Then Max, Julia's anemic 
meth-snorting boyfriend
burst out the front door
shirtless in his white briefs
and told Julia to "shut
her big fucking pie hole
and get inside" because he
had to work at 5:30 a.m.

My wife watched
from our bedroom window,
nudged me and said,
"Pay attention, dear.
There's a poem in this."


An Evening At Wal-Mart

We roamed the aisles
like modern pioneers
in search
of a toothbrush holder.
From a safe distance,
I watched
an overweight man
with suspenders
and a red brimmed
baseball cap that read,
"Fish Fear Me".
as he thumbed through
the snack food section.
His finger was knuckle deep
in his nostril.
Then he pulled it out,
stared at it,
and popped it
in his mouth
like a Pringle chip.

Dostoevsky once wrote
that we are all responsible
for each other's actions.
I decided then
under the halogen glow
of the Wal-Mart lights
to stop reading altogether.

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