On the prairie

Aloft crested peaks that gently slope into her crossed legs, a bespectacled Grant Wood impersonating Oliver Wendell Douglas catcalls at Zsa Zsa Gabor pitching hay in the buff.

Say hello to city living as he drags her away from the lie of the land, full of rolling plains mainly dry of rain but green still. For across the lost horizon lined with ripened fruit stands erect their lone ribbed condominium perpendicular the junction where petticoats hang as if Kilroy was already there.

Time to harvest the seedlings planted late winter, she objects but the Hawkeye in him is too impatient, already late for his appointment with the family orthodontist waiting by an old easel, eager to paint. Yet even in a hurry, he does stop, though, just long enough to pose from her point of view and crops the depth of field provincially.

Now the fallow ground swells, an expanse isometrically compressing dormant plate tectonics to bubble up succubi transforming her pink fleshy body into verdant countryside.

So over the hill both eschew the flaneur promising drink and take turns to cultivate their own gardens at the pitched fork in the road.

Virgins

Together,

photographically seamed
without a stitch
a long distance copy

Adam and Eve
sans apple, only serpents

but in the basement
or bedroom
rather than garden

exposing
John and Yoko
to reveal digitized
pillow talk
between white sheets
of elevator music

an album recording
their naked passion

even if imagined
through pictures
in lieu of

making love.

Steerage

Lying back relaxed,
her brown pupils
ever so Cindy Sherman
gaze off,

a worm's eye view
in black and white.

Through the glass
tapered shadows 
architecturally proportionate
disguise traditional ground
from silhouetted figure

Ellsworth Kelly, of course, 
disapproves. But who cares? 
Certainly not our displaced heroine 
modeling nude for Alfred Stieglitz

early on in the twentieth century
when the industrial revolution built 
cities of steel to capture their souls 
until the desert sands beckoned

the prodigal daughter returns
from Broadway, 

boogie woogie 
be damned 

as abandoned skyscrapers afloat 
in negative space, a succession 
of white clouds marching in unison
bloom into petaled cow skulls.

Black nights cooled down 
before their journey west 
holding hands 
with another monkey king 

and true to form he now sheds his clothes

in intense heat.

Inamorata

Under the red light she waves unhurriedly, demure of any gesticulation before languishing sideways onto the reddened divan. An innocent act, for sure, meant to comport vulnerability akin to something kawaii but the lonely dragster revving his engine at the intersection, refuses to peel off.

Or maybe not, for how often does an unclothed Olympia gaze upon you from her seraglio? he wonders and mesmerized, lifts his reflective visor to leer at her ecdysial state in spite of himself, unblinking until both eyelids grow cumbrous from the torpid discourse about to lecture...

Then without any provocation, a preternatural quiet sucks all the white noise through a clear straw, cleansing old wounds. In that void, words form but do not speak. Octagonal translation universally
transmits a failure to communicate in either Japanese or Swedish. Perhaps the remedy then is telepathic or semaphoric or even photographic.

He strips completely down to increase his magnetic field, but to no avail as she fades further into black.

Minutes go by before the man, now her lover, regains his equilibrium enough to snag her from the vacuum and lock lips in resuscitation.

She awakens in his arms. Her entree, recently plated, sits on the silver tray room service delivered almost an hour earlier.

Somewhere near Alburquerque

Conjoined mounds, a doppelgänger of its displaced mistress, sits upon the land enchanted, cooing.

So who does she mean to woo remains lost in geodesic thought about how love is metaphysical gravity and naturally wanders right past the white picket fence gate at first before retracing his steps, straining to listen. Her voice, though a thousand miles away, can be heard through the thick purple sky from the setting sun, amplified by the trapezoidal plates overlapping sheet metal salvaged from the abandoned Volvo ready for scrap, some sections barely duck taped, which form the outer shell as roof.

No bunny ranch here, just a woebegone Dymaxion house, the angel on his shoulder whispers, distracted by what R. Buckminster Fuller mistook as tetrahedrons behind the twisted chicken wire armature propping the aluminum foiled coat hanger bent into antennae.

Yet something about the atrophic structure beckons and eventually instinct does force him to stop hunting long enough to knock on the prefabbed door. A hoarse welcome shouts to come in which he begrudgingly abides. But why invite such a ghost? Let bygones be bygones, they say, but she takes comfort knowing her place is not haunted by infected genetic material.

But bad blood will often more than not still coagulate so the dark interior requires his eyes several minutes to adjust in order to repay an old debt saving big money and slowly dilated pupils overstimulate.

For the portal he passed through, a spade-shaped window frame of sprawling vines now becomes another dimension which belies the external state of disrepair in classic forensics, compliments of the stepbrother who would be handyman squatting in residence, ready to argue the Fibonacci sequence in defense.

March follows the long February of Iroquois snow. So where did she go? When will the lady of the house return?

Soon the water will flow again.

Rectangular notes

The lesson of a rectangle is harsh. Geometrically speaking, its sharpness, though crisp, reveals truth. So to alleviate the pain, add fringes to both ends.

Any imagined hierarchy still hurts to swallow, though.

Rendezvous

Up north
down the block

martinis
neatly shaken
with lychee,
jalapeño
and soju

to order

fresh saudade
sautéed
atop scallioned
omelet

no yukhoe
tonight

maybe
too raw

waiting on
Helen and Mark
later than sooner

on the half shell
bluepoints, malpeques,
kumamotos

around the corner
from Maatsumoto
deaf father and son

look for

white Doric columns
red hand-railing
three-story grey stone

the house
on Foster

is empty

no one home
except us

flipping
plastic-covered
ring-bound

colorless
family tree
deep rooted

our sanctuary
lies sixty degrees
Fahrenheit
cooler

body heat
furnace blow
whispered coos

tongue earlobe
follow neck contour
adagio

areola
then circle
nipple

as you
engulf

Upstairs, downstairs

Cloistered

in her bedroom
on the second floor,
Grandmother
now ninety-six years old

watches
WGN-TV News
in the dark
to save electricity

while
in the apartment
below

the thin
Disney themed quilt
barely blankets
their nakedness

as he ensconces
her warm body
from behind,

cuddling
arms, legs

skin