Sunday, March 29, 2009

Brendan Dacey

Brendan Dacey

Kia Pantaloni

I asked the black and white girl
with the tangled mane
and the broken garters
What's the price for the soul
of a whore?

She looked at me and said,
The price to dunk a fool
at the county fair
into a freezing tub of water

What would happen if I
placed my arms around you?

She lifted her shirt up,
displaying grotesque burns
in repeated imprints
of spreading hands

What would happen if I put 
my lips to yours? I replied

Your lips would seal shut with
the black cum of one thousand
wretched men

What would happen if I put
my hands around your throat?

She crooned, Instead of screaming
I would sing.

What would happen if I put 
myself in your mouth?

She answered with a boney
hand to her breast, Your member
would cringe from the ancient gin
that burns my throat.

I looked her in the eyes and said,
What would happen if I put
myself inside of you?

Then I'll never let go,
she said as the liquid rouge
melted off her lips
and she came apart one by one
like cigarette ash to the wind

Ulises Garcia



Matthew Cox

Remembering, Reliving: Anti-Fading

Matchbox rooms
stood erect above a 
half hanging rail
that watched my
bumpy laundry basket rides.
The markings on the doorway
told me the previous family
was much taller than mine,
and I admired them.

My father spent weeks
making the shingles blue,
and I spent weeks
covering them with circles of dirt
in efforts to be
Cal Ripken Jr.
I heard the neighbors fights
the same time I realized
crawdads don't
live long in a glass box
full of sand and water.

My father chewed the peppermint,
so I chewed the peppermint.
We planted rows
of something beautiful.

My mother taught me
to fold socks,
and praised me when
my clothing matched.
We made giraffes from
paper plates,
and I always hid behind her.

Today I told a girl
that it would rain.
I really thought it would.
I wanted it to rain
because I know how she is
when it rains.

Today I was a genius - or a child,
because I believed it would rain.
And the same way
my grandfather died too soon,
not from cases of Natural Light
or cartons of cigarettes,
but because I stopped
tying his feet in the sailor's knot
he taught me long ago.
The simple pleasure of 
untying the knot
made him a child.
And unlike a Navy tattoo
on freckled weathered skin,
and the paint of the ship
he sailed,
a child's spirit never
fades.