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David Aronson


Waving Bones


Black cloth, white neck
white specks
sprinkle his shoulder
like snow in July
while air conditioners blow
wet hair from furrowed brows,
sweat-stain rivers
God has plowed.
Fisher-Price people
fill his pews,
each peg in their hole
waiting for their cues
to sit or stand.
he feels his hand
tremble,
his thick-lensed scrutiny
of the assembled
petitioners of prayer,
flakes fall from his hair
like the sin-microbes
he searches for,
a Christian scientist,
a surgeon for the lord.
his head a strip-mined mountain
sparsely covered with graying strands,
his hands
desperately grip the book
which gives directions,
orders from heaven.
others prefer
the evening paper
to map out their world,
a different plot
with plenty of hot
action; car crashes
and murder and tits
as solid as wisps
of smoke or the ghost
of the Jew that hangs on the wall
and bleeds on his pages
staining them red
while from his head
the flakes still fall
as the room grows colder
he shivers, though sure
of his eternal reward
he fears that final
tap on the shoulder.

Priests wave bones
and give benediction
but the truth is still
that all truth is fiction.




I'm Still Alive


Every morning,
death is there to greet me,
cheerfully tipping his hat
as I brush my teeth.

I'm still alive.

Every morning,
death smiles and waves to me
from the back of my
cereal box.

I'm still alive.

Every day brings opportunities
for death to slip in the back door.
The moon collapses,
the sun explodes,
airplanes fly right through your window.

Every evening,
death tucks me into bed
and kisses my ear.

I'm still alive.

Every day I'm a survivor,
yet still I twiddle my thumbs,
pick my ass,
and stare blindly out the window.




You Want Fries or Cole Slaw With That?
or
The Lazy Hermaphrodite


I am a pea rolled around in a pod,
Shook up like parcheesi dice.
The nervous bird that smashes the glass
is not the monkey that pushes the button.
I am play-doh meat grinder spaghetti,
Blown chunks of alphabet soup.
The letters arrange themselves
in omens and portents.
Chicken entrails and pasta can be molded
into some kind of sentient life.
Transmigrating souls with walkmans and soda cans;
Turn the dial to open the forehead,
Poke the left eye for a new window.
I am a pineapple chunk suspended in jello,
Dribbling out of an old man's dentures.
I can create entire worlds with scissors and paper.
I am hurtling sperm bursting endless ovum.
Come on and shuffle my cards;
Topple over my dominoes.
Truth is tempted out of my colon with sour milk,
and that's my own face on the back of the carton.
Look-see? The jacket is reversible.
I was put in the kiln a long time ago
but I never harden.
Love letters and writs of execution
were stuffed under my lid.
Come on and burst my piņata.
Unwrap me and tell me how many licks it takes
to get to the center.
Can you imagine reading the same fucking book
for two thousand years?
Why wait for Halloween? Let's eat
the whole damn thing right now!

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