unready for the storm, since...

january's put up a weak fight so far, and the cold sides of the hills can barely hold onto their blankets of snow, yet my mother, who's spent the last four decades in highdesert-dustbowl-parkinglot-southwest towns was out of sorts while she visited to get a rare week to spend with her (fourth) grandchild. will her visit even register w/him?

jackson's favorite thing's to watch me doing certain things--plucking black leaves from the trees and crumbling them in my palm, walking backwards away from him, petting the dog, turning pages. i just passed through an invisible breakdown, and have surfaced again w/o a mark or sound, promoted, and with a new recipe to make my own orange cognac liqueur (two parts ketel, one part meukow and leftover slices of overripe valencias).

we live at the edge of boston, in a haitian neighborhood...

i pass over the frozen charles a handful of times every week, and the geese wait for me. there is an expensive bottle of bourbon on top of the fridge, and two half-empty bottles inside. i have one black leather belt, one white tie, an empty shoe box (and today i bought my first suit jacket at the goodwill in jamaica plain!)

jim harrison is in search of small gods, and while jackson naps, we two like to sit together on the porch under the storms with a nip of four roses while i try nihilate those same gods in soundless debate.
.
.
.
chain lightning winding through the sky's grey rot
you are a small god
eating your own lips
you are the genius of a snake

the earth is sprouting wings in empty lots
through salt and poison
where is my heart, tripping through the rain on bourbon winds?
my shoulders ache, heavy to the bone

waiting on a foldout chair in a flask
half-full of cigarettes--eaves holding the storm at arm's length--
for maria, in her poor wet body
melting like sugar as she races home
half a mile past the end of the line