Emma Goldman. Numb fingers rip at the waxy and crumpling skins of onions. Oildrops. Progress. Wrappers upon the eyes. The harsh fruit within. The frail, innocent, wicked wind. A boxed-up blanket covered in warnings. A sticker factory. FRAGILE. THIS SIDE UP. DECEASED. TO BE BURNED. CONTAMINATED. GINORMOUS. TO BE EXONNERATED.

Where a man once was with his white-cupped tide of coffee tilted as if to suggest an unreliable axis, where he once sat on the cold, dry sidewalk next to an open-mouthed orange road barrel, full of trash and snow and rolling carelessness, now with the rain on and on point I pass him again, transformed into a wide black garbage bag with the strain of something square stretching it out. A broken piece of furniture. A bag of bones. EXACT SAME PLACE. A couch with the bottom blown out. Aren’t we pretty? The room of a stupid teenager. Black. A phone as a centerpiece. Some inner organ gone corrupt and unnoticed. Like your lungs, darling. I cry and flirt.

An old man with fake orange hair eats a small hot dog covered in a pile of anemic onions. An actress with a flat backside and faked blonde hair lets her cell phone ring some recognizable bastardization of a popular song several moments too long before answering it chirpily and eerily-on the very next note in the progression. She knows her life so well. The Onions and the Actress could make a delightful fairy tale together.

A face of the rave. A raving face. The face of the grave. An unoriginal rant. A machine gun full of poppyseeds and leaking vinegar on expensive, forbidden carpet. The president removes his shoes in the white house. The president has head lice. The president wears plastic booties and has only one time in his life aimed a revolver into his own or someone else’s mouth. This is a story that will never be spoken of again.

I wanted

I wanted to sit in my window and smoke a cigarette but I can't stop watching the neighbors on their patio-the two of them. He cracks a beer. They split it. She has dark hair. The back of his head is gray. I wanted to stare out at nothing, but because of the shape of my window and the shape of myself, this is the way my body has to be angled, facing them. I suppose it will appear as though I am watching. I wanted to smoke a cigarette and forget about my sister. But the people who hurt you the most are the ones you can't forget. And the people you envy you can't stop watching.

The Devil's Wife Still Comes

the devil?
He's in a hospital in Detroit.
He's a colored man
and commits idolatry
by watching television
on purpose.

keeping up his evil

for good, for beautiful, for true
do not concern him
he left his wife fifteen years ago
after a botched abortion
but knows she is watching
from an electronic plane buggy
while he finishes peas
and trades jello for ham.

He knows two phrases in Latin (pig)
and uses them to condemn his enemies
and often rhymes
the water line
in Palestine
my demons there
destroy the time

keeping up his evil

The devil is being made to eat his medicine.
The devil is accepting souls
in return for observing his bedtime.
It is 1967 and outside things are happening
while the devil tempts heaven
and chases a sandmachine
that forces his sleep
down the hall.

It is an electronic mop
and he is the devil
and his wife brings a bag of fruit sometimes
and sad, angry eyes
to the room with the warped TV.

"It's you and me." she says

"It's the devil and his enemies. I'm dead."

The devil's wife begins bruising his fruit
on purpose
and committing adultery
with a cop
who let her off
a speeding ticket
last week when she almost missed visiting hours.
Her devil has not had her
since he became a mad man,
but the devil's wife still comes.

loose headboard
lost watch
maid blamed