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The following can also be found in the book Chicago Stories 1998. Click here to learn more, and to download a free electronic copy.
I.
She enjoyed pouring hot wax over her breasts.
She said it was a turn-on for her.
So one night
I put a match to her nipples.
And they lit
and shined bright and clear
and by their yellow-blue light
I wrote this poem.
II.
When my mother wants to punish me
she takes me out
of the corner of the room
where I stand with my nose stuck
and forces me
to go to Mary's
birthday party
with the cake
and the presents
and the ponies
and the clowns.
It's pure hell.
III.
Don't speak French to me anymore
and stop raving about subtitled movies I'll never watch
and stop yelling at me for liking diner food
and stop reading me your tear-stained poems in your twenty dollar sketchpad
and don't make me listen to one more single Ani Defranco song
and
you know what?
Just go home.
IV.
Our love was like an abstract expressionist painting
wide splashes of color
bumpy clumps of oil paint on
naked canvas.
Then she became a neo-realist.
The whore.
V.
I asked her why she never told me
that she kept the decaying remains
of several of her ex-boyfriends
locked in a broken refrigerator
in her basement.
She said cause you never asked.