The following can also be found in the book Chicago Stories 1997. Click here to learn more, and to download a free electronic copy.

A black and white photo
is all I have
of her
and her dog
standing and squatting
on the boomling baggy crag rocks
of the black and white seashore
which I'll never taste
with my own salty tongue
the brine
jumping out in crystalline sharp relief
of a Photoshop enhanced icon
of sex and flesh and
six am runnings on the beach
Malibu dreams
as a kid
watching Blake Edwards movies
on late night cable television
when I'm not supposed to
white cotton
ll bean sweaters
draped naughtingly around
muscled tan flesh waist
which I dream of gripping
with naked hand

she is squatting
like taking a shit
but instead my cock inside her
which is what I call it
when we soliloquy each other
over copper wires
and bounce each other's libidos
off a gold-foil covered wing
of a NASA drawing
high in the sky
with pie
stars a glob of white pinpricks
my prick pinpricking her
I want to say
but call it ‘cock' instead
for fear
of the gold-foiled wing
dropping like a hot potato
and screaming forward
backward
into time
into the sea
Africans wearing souvenir hardhats
combing their countryside
for evidence of the wreckage
to sell to Dynamite magazine
and we are fucking right now
but she doesn't know it
She is off in Sydney
fucking the boyfriend she wished she didn't have
who I will never meet
in a city I will never see
rocks I will never stumble on
and rip open my knee
the blood trickling down my leg
looking like a bad horror flick
minus the pain
I will never cut my knee on the black and white
craggly skedaggly bas-relief rocks
of a Photoshop moon
and she loves me
and she loves me not
and did you know
the game ring around the rosie
is a rhyme about the black plague?

I dream under fluttering eyelids
and hot laptop
of her curly girl hair
flying to the ring around the rosie
backyard
of an Australian barbeque
I dream
behind barbituate-addled fluttering eyelids
of shrimp thrown on a blazing hot fire
the sweet smells of frying flesh
wafting over the craggly rocks
which will never suck my blood
calling to us
‘god, is that the barbeque?
god, I'm so hungry, come on'
wait
just
no
hey
wait
just kiss me again
kiss me one more time
it's a dream, it can't possibly be happening
because we are living in black and white
we are artificially sharpened
by a Photoshop dream
so as long as I have you here
let me tell you at this point to kiss me again
and you'll say okay
because you can't help yourself
because you are a dream
and this is a dream
a dream electronically transferred
over copper wire
and gold-foiled NASA wings
bounced like a bad heavy-metal album cover
over the land and sea and air and
w
a
t
e
r
to find you
or at least to find a parking spot
until you get back from fucking your boyfriend
and find me still standing
still waiting
still kissing
and
don't go yet
my poem's not done
it can't be
just kiss me one more time, okay?
I know you're not really here
I know I can't kiss black and white flesh
but just kiss me one more time and whisper that you love me

okay.
I love you.
Let's go eat.